


E C H O

by Reslly



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aliens, AlleyMonster™, Alternate Universe, Balmeran Hunk, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Galra Keith, Human Pidge, Hunk is a fugitive from the galra, It's going to be for a little bit, Lance is the bestest friend, M/M, Pidge brings an alien home and it's chaos from there, Probably gonna be some violence, Shiro is a space dad, a Hunk a Hunk of burning escape pod, but I swear I'm gonna try to make it otherwise, human Lance, human shiro, keith is a rebelling galra, lance and pidge hide an alien, saving the universe, seems Pidge-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-08 16:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14698092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reslly/pseuds/Reslly
Summary: If a soul is filled with the overwhelming passion of the heart, its cries can vibrate off the stars, to the moons, the galaxies beyond its own, and echo to the ends of the universe.





	1. Pidge Gets More Than She Bargained For

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, here it is. I'm giving it a go.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge is perfectly content staying in her apartment all her life. Lance has other plans, other plans that namely involve dragging Pidge to the Garrison City landing day festival.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I know there's someone at the door. They called for help, of this I'm sure, but do I want to say goodbye to all the glowing eyes? I'm holding on to what I know and what I know I must let go, but I would rather play a song for the eyes to sing along.”
> 
> "Glowing Eyes" - Twenty One Pilots

**December 3, 2037 2:54 P.M. EST Garrison City, New York**

 

    _“Commander in Chief Robynson calling in a Delta Nine Charlie, Alpha protocol, does anyone read?”_

 

_“----Oh, uh, yeah. Me—uhm, Lieutenant Davis filling in for Captain Smith. What can I do for you Commander Robynson?”_

 

_“Lieutenant, I just told you I’m calling in a Delta Nine Charlie.”_

 

_“Oh, right. Yes, let’s see. Uhm. That’s a hurricane call sign ain’t it?”_

 

_“Davis a hurricane is Echo Seven Six, I’m calling in a civil disturbance in progress, area thirty one, corporal’s quarters.”_

 

_“...do you ever think someone’s listening in on us?”_

 

_“_ Christ Davis _, are you drunk?”_

 

_“Sorta_ — _well not_ really. _Jus’ a lil’ bit.”_

 

_“Davis, get Monroe on your position right now or so help me Go-”_

 

    Pidge clucked her tongue, reaching across the cluttered expanse of her desk to flip the buzzing radio off. Hysterical giggles quickly replaced the silence left by the radio’s absence, and Pidge found herself falling back into one of the old habits she had sworn time and time again to quit: talking to herself.

    “That’s because someone _is_ listening, idiot.” She snorted, hands returning to her ancient keyboard. She had considered investing a bit of money in a new keyboard, one that wasn’t hyperbolically older than time itself, but every time it crossed her mind she deduced that the _click clack_ her keys made when she pressed into them was far too satisfying to trade for something more tactile.

    Pidge hummed a jolly tune to herself as she worked, dragging and dropping files into locked folders as fast as her computer could download them. Her fingers move at the pace of a hyperactive squirrel driven by four consecutive double-shot espressos. She moved to a rhythm and by a formula. Step one, poke nose where it doesn’t belong. Step two, see what she could find. Step three, download what interested her. Step four—the most important— fiddle around with the rest for laughs. Step five, leave nothing that can be traced back to her. Simply put, simply done.

    Her rhythm was however interrupted by the effectively jostling, and declaratively annoying, chime of her ringtone, a special little jingle that consisted of Lance’s auto-tuned voice repeating ‘ _pick up the da’yum phone_ ’ over and over again in different pitches. With that as her ringtone, you could bet she wasted no time in answering her calls.

    “Rover, answer phone call.” She chimed, eyes not breaking away from her computer screen for even a glance.

    “ _Answering call._ ” The speaker next to her responded. She scoffed inwardly, tongue half stuck out and glowering at the scrolling encrypted text along her line of blue light vision.

    “Gunderson Computer Exploits and Tech Assistance, whad’dya want?” Pidge tapped a panel on the side of her headset, turning up the volume and _still_ straining to hear the quiet, nervous mumbling on the other end of the line. Anything the caller had to say was cut of by a single loud cackle. She drawled, “Buddy, if you’re looking for a money laundering service, open up a nightclub. Thanks for calling, refer me, buh- _bye_.”

    A click ended the call and dipped the room back into blessed quiet, and clicking. Pidge _tssk-_ ed condescendingly to herself. Some people just didn’t get a clue that when she said computer exploits she meant _computer_ exploits. Nervous money launderers and their inability to comprehend that, she swore.

    Pidge Gunderson, Katie Holt if you were to talk to her mother or get a hold of her birth certificate, was not the type of person to do average things in average ways. In fact, she was the very type of person to do _un_ average things in very _un_ average ways. She could have any desk job in the history of ever, working for some big-wig company, and make more than enough money to take care of those in her charge—Pidge, herself, and her, in that order. But, no. Instead she made a living off peeking her head into government databases, radio transmissions, and _occasionally_ hacking into a paying customer’s account they forgot the password to, an easy job an ‘I forgot my password’ bot could accomplish, _but hey_ , if people were willing to pay her, then who was she to refuse? She lived on the wild side of life scouring all walks of technology for any information she could get her hands on. Any other lifestyle was far too boring for her tastes.

    Pidge ran a hand through her greasy auburn hair, ignoring her own disgust and squinting at the tiny flickering date marking the bottom right corner of her screen. She bit her lip, pushing all thoughts of personal hygiene to the side for the moment, or two. She used her desk to propel her and her rolling chair to the other side of her room, where her wheel promptly got caught on a wayward bra discarded on the floor. Her chair dumped her on the ground to join it.

    She rolled on to her back with little more than a pained grunt, kicking the traitorous bra and a few of its comrades off to the side underneath a long-unused stool. Occupying a small cubby of space on her one bedroom wall _not_ completely plastered in game posters and cheap merchandise was a small chalkboard, marred with the occasional niche in its wooden border, and boasting precisely three-thousand five-hundred seven lines in chalk no longer than a pencil eraser each. To this, she added another, making it a total of two thousand two hundred and eighty _six_.

    If her clock was correct, and hadn’t joined the mutiny her bra sparked, it was well after two in the afternoon and time for her to begrudgingly behave like a normal human being. Her first act of the day as an actual person, shower to get rid of her musk: equal parts body odor and chinese take-out smell. She abandoned the dim, dusty quarters of her room to pad off to the one place in her apartment not assaulted by various food garbage and discarded technology junk—her bathroom.

    Like any sane woman, Pidge’s bathroom was a clean haven among filth, brightly lit, stocked with fluffy towels and rugs alike, and eternally smelling of the flowers she’s never once owned in her apartment. She turned on the lights, blanketing her bathroom in a heavenly glow she had grown to appreciate, along with a hot shower that, combined, never failed to make her feel like a new woman the second the hot water hit her in scalding beads. She was always more of a shower person. Sure, baths were relaxing and all, but showers were far more efficient.

    Soaked head to toe and owl-eye glasses resting on the sink counter where they were bound to get fogged up, Pidge lathered her hair with a palm full of some nice strawberry-scented soap her mother sent her every now and then. She knew without a shred of doubt that somewhere on the hot pink bottle were directions telling her she was using about five times too much shampoo, but with curls as thick as hers she was surprised half her grocery budget wasn’t spent on hair products alone. She blamed her mother’s Italian side of the family for all of her hair troubles, thick curls included. Exotic, sweet scented suds washed away the general filth one would associate with technology fueled insomnia and the eating habits of a pubertic teenage boy, of which Pidge was very much not.

    Pidge stuck her arm unceremoniously out of the curtain opening, blindly groping for an aforementioned fluffy towel until her fingers grasped one. The warm water came to a grinding halt, Pidge stepping out of the shower into the significantly cooler bathroom to towel herself off, hopping from icy cold tile to a soft shag rug she could bury her toes into and proceeding to brush her teeth. Three years of braces managed to achieve nothing for her but straightening out a single cockeyed canine and establishing dental habits of steel. Brush twice a day, floss once a day, mouthwash _at night_ , and always, _always_ use a straw when drinking tea.

    Her bathroom mirror donned a multitude of colorful fluorescent sticky notes, courtesy of Lance from one of the many, _many_ times he came over to visit her. Mostly to ensure she was alive and to bring her cheap take-out. Each note advertised a little reminder, or a quote, and the occasional half-assed doodle. Great idea on Lance’s part, truly, but in hindsight only effective if she bothered to give them more than one sideways glance, and if she had any intention whatsoever of following through on what they had to say. No sir, Pidge was not going to go out and make new friends, she was very much content with her current best friend—and long time doorman—Lance, and like _shit_ was she going to work on her swearing problem. Lance would have more luck convincing Hell to freeze over.

    Abandoning her towel in a small pile that included the clothes she peeled off before her shower, Pidge padded into her room, digging through her _one_ dresser drawer, the one that every person has where they stuff their go-to outfits. She was expected to go out in public, assuming she failed to weedle her way out of it, and that meant her clothing choices were limited to items that could protect her from the biting winter winds. Anything with holes in it or an inability to provide her with warmth was pushed out of her way. Ultimately she was left with a worn pair of too-long skinny jeans and a basic baby blue t-shirt from a charity event she only _vaguely_ remembered going to, something she could easily pair with a hoodie.

    She tugged on the essentials, hipster underwear from the Walmart down the street and a loose fitting sports bra, also from Walmart. She half tripped, half wriggled into her jeans, deciding they were not friendly for those with round hips like the ones she had grown to develop. Pidge shot her reflection a dirty look, eyeing her sopping wet hair, and wandered into her kitchen with a sigh. She retrieved a dry towel from the linen cabinet tucked away in the pitiful closet she called a laundry room and put in twice the effort required to dry her rebellious curls viciously. Walking around her apartment with soaking wet hair was perfectly tolerable in her opinion, but wet clothes clinging to her skin was a sensation she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy. The phantom feeling her imagination produced alone was enough to send shivers up and down her spine.

    She was brought out of her cringe-worthy reverie by a single loud knock on her door, followed by two short raps. Lance.

“Pidge, are you decent?” Lance’s loud lilting voice assaulted her senses, sending Pidge sprint-sliding toward her bedroom and dive-bombing for her shirt. Somewhere in between her frantic scramble for her shirt and the moment she got it pulled over her head, she sent her clock a withering glare for pointing out to her she had spent an overly generous amount of time in the shower. What a mutinous clock indeed.

“Well I don’t know Lance,” She called back, struggling to fit her freckled arms through both sleeves at the same time, “I’m complete garbage twenty-four-seven, so you might as well come in.”

Pidge managed to yank her shirt down over her midriff right as Lance waltzed—not walked, such a word wouldn’t be elegant enough to convey how impeccably flawless every step the Cuban took was—into her apartment. Lance raised a questioning, if not amused, brow at the scene before him, Pidge sprawled on her room’s hardwood floor with her damp hair splayed out every which way. His eyes locked on hers for a brief moment of quiet before he grinned smugly, “You just got dressed, didn’t you.”

It wasn’t a question, not in the least, but nonetheless Pidge felt warranted in rolling over, gathering her feet under her, and brushing off her clothes to bide herself time to concoct a response. “Well if you _must_ know, yes Lance. Yes I did.” She huffed in something akin to faux fluster, “Deal with it.”

She shrugged on a sweatshirt she had found months ago in a Target clearance bin, it had been so soft at the time and light she couldn’t resist jumping at the first sight of it. She gave Lance a look that dared him to challenge her, even in the slightest. Behind his reflective aviators she couldn’t tell if his infectious smirk reached his eyes.

“So. Ya’ ready to go?” Lance laughed, dodging a swat aimed at his chest, or really, wherever Pidge could land a hit. He ultimately had the height advantage on her, towering a good foot and inch above her. The only thing she could lord over him was that at four feet ten inches she could still sock him where it hurt.

“Give me a damn second.” She charged into her bathroom like a woman on a mission, but stopped just short of the mirror. She looked her hair over and a million ideas came to her mind in a fraction of a second. Pigtails. Braids. A bun. A ponytail. Thousands of ways she could style her hair. She ignored all of them, opting rather to run a wide-bristled brush through her hair so her curls wouldn’t dry wacky and flat.  She spun on her heel, stuffing her feet into the nearest pair of shoes she saw. Green eyes ablaze she met Lance’s smirk head-on, “ _Now_ , I’m ready.”

“Wow. People don’t kid around when they say women take for- _e_ -ver to get ready.” Lance joked. He was dressed very casually: Levi’s, generic blue baseball tee, a brown leather jacket, plain Vans.

“Well if you think inviting me anywhere is a hassle, then I could just stay hom—”

“Oh _no_ ,” He cut Pidge off, shushing her with a tan finger to her lips, “We are _not_ playing this game, not this time Holt.”

“What game Lance?” She blinked up at him, and not for the first time in the course of their friendship was he reminded why Pidge could get away with swearing like a sailor and being downright evil at times. No one expected the innocent looking one, and with Pidge’s round honey eyes, she could deceive an angel.

He didn’t grace her with an answer in words, giving her _that_ look, and pointing at her front door with a dead-straight face. “Out. _Now_.”

Pidge dropped the innocent act, pouting bitterly and scooping up her satchel and phone, slipping her glasses on her nose, the things she never left the apartment—when she left her apartment—without. Lance snorted, stuffing his aviators in his coat pocket and rolling his eyes. Pidge led the way out of her apartment, towards the end of the long winding hall, and down five flights of stairs. He cut in front of her, getting the door out of sheer habit and irony. Even off the job, old doorman habits died hard.

The second she reached the outside world, stepped foot on the sidewalk, let the cold fresh air she would never on her life admit she missed hit her, Pidge reared on him and stuck an accusing finger at him, “You’re a social pusher, you know that?”

“Hey,” Lance held his hands up, “not my fault you’re a shut in.”

“Well I’m just fine being a shut in, thank you very much.” She declared, marching ahead of the Cuban man. His advantage of having significantly longer legs ensured he caught up with her leisurely.

“ _Besides_ , who else was I supposed to go to the landing day festival with?” He raised a brow, gesturing with his arms and grinning lopsidedly.

“The festival is stupid.”

“ _What?_ How? It’s like a...a...um, _whatchamacallit_ —worldwide holiday!”

“Global. The word you were looking for was global.”

“To _ma_ to tomato. How is it stupid?”

“To celebrate the day humanity landed on Mars we, the bright people of Garrison City—a cultural wasteland—have a model ship of the Mars shuttle land in town square in the middle of the festival.

“I’m not seeing the stupidness here.” Lance narrowed his eyes.

She smiled up at him, flicking him on the forehead between his eyes with a light hearted sigh. “You usually don’t.”

Lance watched her continue down the sidewalk towards the closest subway station while he stood in confusion before the intensity of her burn hit him. He cupped his hands around his mouth as a makeshift megaphone, “Oh I see Pidge, that was an insult wasn’t it? Well hardy, har, _har_ —wait, are you leaving? _Shoot_ , Pidge wait up!”

The next twenty seven minutes on the dot passed in a blur of graffitied subway walls through the subway windows and whispered conversation. Pidge questioned how in the world she let Lance convince her to do things she very much did not want to do, and Lance reminded her that they are “besties” and she’s “like, spiritually forced” to agree to hang out with him.

The subway station was far more crowded than usual, which was fair given the Landing Day Festival and the Galaxy Garrison Space Academy were the only reasons people ever came to Garrison City. The festival was to Garrison like SXSW was to Austin, except way less cool in Pidge’s opinion.

“It’s _so_ packed in here. I’m honestly going to cry if the festival is this crowded.” Lance groaned in less than quiet dismay. Pidge knew exactly why Lance was dead set on attending the festival: it was entirely sponsored by the Galaxy Garrison. She never could completely understand his infatuation with anything and everything related to the Garrison, but it always seemed to boil down to Lance’s love for flight. He once confessed to her years ago when their friendship was barely beginning to crawl that he dreamed of becoming a pilot one day. She was the one that inspired him to think of his gig as a doorman as a way of making money now, and using it to pursue piloting at the Garrison. Never once did she see him happier than the day he signed up for night classes for full-fledged flight training.

“Bet it’s going to be chaos. You should buy me coffee.” She hummed, squeezing past groups of strangers simply _engrossed_ in their conversations.

“What?” He furrowed his brows and slipped his phone from his pocket. “It’s like, _four_ Pidge. Coffee time has passed, and that’s coming from a Cuban.”

“I’m just saying, a frappuccino packed with sugar and caffeine is scientifically proven to make _me_ a nicer person. Trust me, I know science.”

Lance sighed, replacing his wallet with his phone to ensure he even had enough money for coffee. Thankfully, he did. “ _But,_ you owe me garlic knots.”

Pidge thought it through for exactly twenty six hundredths of a second. “Deal.”

She had Pizza Hut on speed dial, the delivery guy probably knew her apartment number by heart and could describe her down to the freckle to any criminal sketch artist. She could get garlic knots as easily as she could press a button. But coffee? God she _wished_ some genius thought up the idea of delivering coffee to the door, then she’d have half as many reasons to leave her apartment.

“Hold onto my jacket, can’t go losing my short person before we even get to hang.” Lance laughed, shoving his way past people and dragging Pidge along with him. She resigned herself long ago to her role as Lance’s go-to-borderline-sister-best-friend-type-person long ago. It was a thankless job but it had its perks. Free coffee being one those, and the occasional favor or two.

“So, besides being ‘spiritually’ inclined to spend time with you at the most boring festival in the history of existence, I’m getting snack privileges out of this right?” She pried when they broke when they broke free of the crowd and into the frigid streets.

He scoffed. “Why do you want in the break room anyways? That’s the only place I get a break and even _I_ don’t wanna be there.”

“It’s simple my dear Lance. Two words. Unlimited. Snacks. All from the comfort of my apartment building. I mean, why leave if there’s a conveniently placed room full of vending machines right down stairs?” She grinned, hands stuffed in her pockets and on the lookout for the nearest cafe she could get a good hit of caffeine.

“Wow, okay, Pidge you’re getting lazier than me. I almost want to fight you for the title of lazy friend, but that would take way too much energy. Plus I could break something, and _this_ perfection doesn’t happen on its own.”

Pidge snorted, deciding maybe getting out of her apartment for a part of the day wasn’t the worst way to spend her time. The sidewalks were becoming more populated, everyone and their grandma’s cow making their way to the town square to watch the model Garrison Mark V meet the Earth’s surface in a long-awaited, though chaste, embrace. They knew they reached the festival at Amistad park before the long colorful banner stretching from the national bank to the recreational center told them so. Vendors had taken to setting up booths that ran along the streets and pooled around the main pavilion, creating a nice barrier around the designated landing spot, not that they stopped anyone from loitering where a one-hundred sixty-five thousand pound shuttle was meant to land.

“Woah, look at all the people this year, it’s ridic.” Lance gestured to the crowds of people enjoying stand-bought beverages and children running amuck with bubbles and wild imaginations. Pidge hummed half listening, scanning the booths for any advertising coffee—or hot chocolate. Hot chocolate was good with her too.

Lance frowned, looking down down at her. He locked eyes with a coffee shop that he knew would undoubtedly be open. He gently nudged her shoulder, bringing her out of her thoughts and pointing his chin in the cafe’s direction. “Gigi’s good with you?”

“Coffee is coffee man.” She grinned, following his lead through the crowd. It was an art learned over time, really. Short person trick number one, make your tall friends walk through the crowd first to clear a path for you. Bonus: most of the time they freak out thinking they lost you, but worry not tall friend, you are right behind them.

Lance was a force of nature when he wanted to be, possessing the intimidation of a tornado and the metaphorical heat of a volcanic eruption. Making his way through the crowd was a piece of cake, nothing more than stretching his long limbs where the rest of his body couldn’t fit and forcing whoever was occupying the space to move or risk an elbow to the face, or worse. _Gigi’s Coffee and Stuff_ , was surprisingly empty for the crowd moving like a school of fish outside. A handful of people who looked like they were working on actual business were scattered here and there, and the normal crowd of ‘I don’t _drink_ coffee it is my _life blood_ ’ hipsters sat at a corner booth.

“Sometimes I feel like the only reason you and me are still friends is because I buy you food.” He grumbled, forking over a few bills to the cashier handing Pidge her fresh made-to-order caramel frappe. Of course, he too was guilty of shamelessly demanding free food of his auburn-haired friend, but that’s what best friends were for, free food and tagging each other in awful memes.

“Oh no, you caught me.” Pidge admitted drily around her sugar-filled drink,  “Also it’s you and I, not you and me.”

“If you’re going to be all smart with me then give me back your six dollar drink.” Lance crossed his arms over his chest sourly. She was unphased by his threat, whether because he never followed through on any of them, or because she knew he had a distaste for caramel, the world may never know.

The calm quiet of the cafe was sorely missed when they returned to the crowded streets, Pidge allowing herself to be dragged through the crowd while she was busy sipping at her drink, which was practically liquid happiness and rainbows. “So,” she paused to sip, “what time is the landing?”

Lance shrugged, satisfied with the almost-front-row spot he claimed for them to watch the landing. If he were to be honest with himself, he threw the whole day’s plans together last minute when he realized at three in the morning he completely forgot the landing day festival was the next day. Forget knowing details, he almost missed the festival as a whole. “Zero clue.”

“My guess is five. So, we got forty minutes.”

“When was the last time you left your apartment?”

“That’s an odd question, very out of the blue Lance. If you must know, I think it was Tuesday so...four-ish days ago?”

“Geez, I don’t understand how you aren’t white as a ghost. You know, I’m pretty sure there’s some necessary vitamin that people get from the sun. Your shut-in-ness might end up killing you.”

“Please, if it was going to kill me I’d be dead by now. Besides, I’m already dead inside so I’m halfway there as it is.”

Lance rolled his eyes and sighed. He loved Pidge, dearly, he truly did, but sometimes her personal care was dismal at best. He had always tried, since the beginning of their friendship, to encourage her to take better care of herself, but his attempts were fruitless at best. All he could do was subtly remind her here and there to show her body and hygiene a little bit of respect and hope for the best.

Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a young lady, a cute thing too, admiring a vendor’s assortment of embroidered sweaters and woven bracelets. He liked the fire that burned in her eyes, a fire he could see from where he stood behind Pidge. He leaned down and whispered to his auburn haired friend, “Hey, I’ll be back. I’m going to go check out one of the stands next to us.”

Pidge hummed in response, watching Lance slink through the crowd with knowing eyes. She was well aware that it was hardly a stand the man was checking out. She had known Lance long enough to be familiar with his flirtatious tendencies, his _Cuban charm_ as he called it. A soft smile wiggled its way onto her lips as she settled into waiting for the highlight of the festival to commence.

She had attended the festival before, countless times, especially when she wasn’t the only Holt to call Garrison City home like she was now. It was harder now to be in attendance knowing the closest Holt was her mother, miles and miles away in the New York countryside. Still, it was nice to watch the other festival goers and their families enjoy themselves. A curly haired child used his father’s hair for purchase, and for a moment Pidge was reminded of another Holt, far, far from her reach.

Pidge could sense a shift in the crowd, a different vibe that buzzed among the festival-goers. Members of the crowd began to avert their gaze upwards, and Pidge followed suit, peering through squinting eyes to see what the rest of the crowd clearly saw that she was missing.  Though the weather was cooler than Pidge would like, the sky was clear, and the sun’s white light didn’t make it any easier for her to pinpoint what was causing the crowd to stir. Ah—there it was. She found it, a small shuttle tracing a path in the sky, a small black dot on an endless expanse of blue.

A woman next to her began to laugh, pointing out the shuttle to the man next to her as it approached the festival landing. Pidge smirked smally at the duo, glancing where Lance was flirting up the fiery dark-haired woman he was eying earlier. She looked at the time on her phone, 4:47. The shuttle was early if it was aiming to land at five.

Festival-goers began to surge forward in anticipation, the circle of people becoming more solid in shape. Pidge found herself less in the front and somehow compacting into the middle of the crowd. She wasn’t sure when or how she was pushed so far back, but without Lance and his considerable height, she hardly stuck out enough to keep people from cutting in front of her. She sighed it off, smirking in the general direction of Lance. She wasn’t the only one who just lost her front-row shuttle-watching spot.

As a matter of fact, as the shuttle grew larger and larger as it came closer, and the crowd squeezed tighter together, Pidge began to think Lance lost his shuttle-watching spot period. Odds were, he was too busy flirting to pay half attention to the festival around him. She supposed there was always next year for Lance, and the year after that. It wasn’t like he didn’t make a point of going to the festival every year, for him it was probably worth it to miss one shuttle landing in favor of getting the target of his affection’s number.

Pidge took a sip of her drink, using a cold pale hand to block the sunlight from her eyes as she tried to follow the shuttle’s course. Only a few minutes now, and it would be close enough to read the Garrison logo painted on the metal paneling. She frowned, listening to it approach. Something seemed odd, out of the usual compared to the festivals she had attended before. Of course, it wasn’t atypical for the shuttle to arrive off schedule, it was usually a few minutes late if anything. What she didn’t find quite right, was the speed at which it raced to greet the crowd. She could hear the wind breaking around it as it sped towards the festival, and it wasn’t showing signs of slowing down. Then again, even Pidge supposed she wasn’t a shuttle engineer, she hardly knew what was normal and what wasn’t for spacecraft.

“Good evening, I would like to thank you all for attending the Landing Day festival.” Pidge whipped around, following the trend in the crowd of averting their attention from the shuttle’s course to landing, to the man on the makeshift stage constructed near the designated landing spot. She recognized the man speaking. If she was correct in her presumption, it was Commander Iverson, the leading man in charge around the Galaxy Garrison. A deep contempt burned like a fire in the pit of her stomach, but as soon as it had ignited, she forcibly extinguished it, looking down to pavement beneath her feet as she listened to the festival’s commencement.

Iverson, a gruff man with one perpetually shut eye and a look about him like he ate nails for breakfast every morning, continued. “Before we begin the shuttle landing to mark the seventeenth anniversary of the Mars landing, I would like to take a moment to commemorate the men and women responsible for the Garrison Mark V’s landing, and the people responsible for every advancement in space exploration that we as a humanity have made in the years since.”

The festival was silent, end to end. It was an honorable silence, but it only served to make Pidge uncomfortable. It wasn’t natural for a crowd of people so large to be completely quiet, and thankfully it didn’t last long. Iverson returned to the microphone, flashing a half-smile for the local news outlets and the entourage of cameras they sported. “Let today mark yet another milestone for humanity, another day in which we promise to further our search for life and understanding in the universe. Please, enjoy the festival.”

The boisterous cheering was more befitting of the crowd than silence. The cheer surrounding Pidge was contagious, so contagious even she found herself grinning even the slightest. She wasn’t so naive as to believe that another Landing Day Festival would “mark yet another milestone” for anyone, least of all humanity’s search for a great understanding of the universe around them. Still, words and encouragement like that did leave a person feeling awful warm and hopeful for the future.

The shuttle was close enough that when Pidge held her pinky up next to it in the sky, it appeared to be just as wide. That was when Lance found his way through the crowd back to her side. He was breathless when he greeted her, a small slip of paper nestled between his fingers as he grinned victorious. “I got me some digits.”

Pidge snorted, “I’m no expert, but I do believe your collection of poor hopeful girls’ numbers is large enough as it is. What are you at now, triple digits?”

“Is that jealousy I hear Pidge? I see how it is, my dear pigeon is scared that her bestie’s going to be too busy catering to the ladies to spend time with her.”

“You wish McClain. I’m just thinking about the sensitive emotional states of the young population of single women you plan on leading on.”

“ _Leading on_? Who says I’m leading,” Lance paused, unfolding the slip of paper and scanning it over quickly. “ _Ashley,_ on?”

Pidge was unamused as she snatched the slip from him, reading the cursive teal ink script. “For one, this is the fourth number this week. Two, her name is Ashleigh, not Ashley.”

He rolled his eyes, stealing the slip back to stuff it away in his pocket, far from her reach where she couldn’t further prove her point. “I’m a man of many tastes Pidge, how am I supposed to know what I’m looking for in the lady of my dreams if I don’t learn what’s out there? You don’t settle on one flavor of ice cream Pidge, not until you’ve tried them all.”

“You just compared women to ice-cream. I’m almost offended on every woman’s behalf.”

“It was a metaphor! My point still stands.”

“Your point barely has legs to stand, the only thing saving you is my coffee, which I appreciate.”

“This is like watching paint dry.” Lance admitted, some minutes later when the shuttle was baseball size to them and slowly approaching over the tops of buildings. “I see where your argument makes sense, this is a little stupid.”

Pidge hummed, “Of course my argument makes sense, I always make sense Lance. And this festival is _always_ stupid.”

There was something painfully boring about being stuck in the middle of a crowd anticipating the same thing, and watching its slow arrival. Lance was right in his comparison, except it reminded Pidge more of a turtle race with a single tortoise and an over-exhilarated crowd. She felt the frustration rolling off the crowd in waves.

She found it more entertaining to watch one of the young children lingering near her experiment with a free noise-maker one of the booths was handing out. The child was a small girl, bleach blonde locks flowing freely from twin pigtails. Between her tiny hands she pushed the noise-maker’s two halves together. The child frowned when no sound resulted from her pressing. She tried again, pressing and pressing with all of her might.

Pidge grinned to herself when the child grew innovative, twisting the object of her attention every which way like a Rubik’s-Cube until it clicked in place. The little girl’s smile rivaled the sun’s as she gripped the noise-maker with her grubby fingers and pushed.

A boom erupted. Pidge watched the child gape down at her noise-maker, astounded that it made such a horrendously loud sound. There was a noise like a train ripping through a tunnel of steel spikes. Sense caught up with Pidge.

“Holy shit—” Lance swore, and that was the last thing she could hear over the brutal crashing subway sounds. Her eyes tracked the model Garrison Mark V where it hovered in the sky half a mile away, safe and sound. Her breath caught in her throat like a fly in a web, gaze glued to the image of disaster barreling towards the crowd. The Garrison Mark V was unharmed, which was more than Pidge could say for the gun-metal gray plane tearing its way through a tower of office space. The stomach twisting screech of metal on metal drowned out what Pidge supposed were the startled shrieks of those in the crowd aware of the impending shit storm heading right towards them.

Pidge looked to Lance, and found to her complete and utter horror that she was absolutely nowhere near where she had been peacefully waiting with Lance moments ago. Around the blurs of people running and shoving to safety, she could see the plane propelling free of the office building it massacred and beginning its descent to the paved and cobble stoned center of Amistad park. The Amistad park occupied by tens of dozens of panicking Garrisonites.

The ground was no longer where it belonged. Her knees and hands scraped against the pavement. Pidge’s heart must have been dislocated, she swore she could feel it beating against her skull while her brain tried to process the frenzy around her. A million scenarios flooded her thoughts. A terrorist attack. Tragically downed plane. Landing Day festivity gone terribly wrong. Private airline error. Very, very large, very, very confused bird—made of metal. Yes, Pidge was sure the vehicle hurtling towards the park center was a large metal bird, because they so often tend to exist and her mind could get mighty creative when she was in the middle of a panic attack.

Panicking was quite possibly the worst thing she could be doing in the situation, second only to being on the ground in a scenario where people could easily trample over her, and she was in the process of doing both things. She could think her way out of this, she was a logical woman and if there was one thing logical women could do it was think their way out of predicaments. First, she had to get off the ground, before someone made the mistake of treading on her. She scrambled to her feet, thankfully for the grounding feeling of solid pavement beneath her feet. The skin of her hands, and she was sure her knees, had seen better days, but that was far from her main concern at the moment. The crowd had cleared out, all except for a few stragglers, herself included.

She felt like a sailor who didn’t know how to swim, staring down a fifty foot wall of water. The only difference was she wasn’t on the ocean, and the flying vehicle violently crashing an unsafe distance from her could do a lot worse than drown her.

Sound ceased to exist as gun-metal gray clashed with the makeshift stage Commander Iverson was speaking on moments ago. To Pidge, it was like watching an asteroid induced volcanic eruption with a plane rather than an asteroid and splintered wood for lava. She sorely hoped she wouldn’t end up like the dinosaurs.

Pidge was blind. No she wasn’t. There was smoke, of course. Never was there ever a violent crash between a vehicle and a building that didn’t result in smoke. She stumbled haphazardly away from the crash site, plunging into the safe area clear of smoke like a diver would plunge into the sea. Her lungs ached, soothed only by the fresh air when she broke into the street deemed a safe distance away from the crash.

Next to her, a woman checked her mother over for injuries. Further down on the sidewalk, a man leaned heavily on a streetlamp, dry heaving. Pidge was disoriented, feeling all too much like the tarnished festival was a raging club and she was an unfortunate patron on a bad acid trip. Far too many flashing lights that dotted her vision, too much movement as the ground spun. The scene was suddenly the spitting image of a prom set-up, crowds of people in terrible disarray, surrounding a demolished dance floor.

Pidge couldn’t see Lance, not like she could see the Garrison Mark V where it hovered in the sky a fair stone’s-throw away. The flight crew was likely receiving orders now to return to the academy, at least until the flying object responsible for the festival wreckage was appropriately identified. The scraped skin on her knees protested when she clambered atop a metal park bench, peering through the smoke in a desperate search for Lance. He was breaking tall friend code: rule number one, short friend was supposed to be able to see him at all times, especially emergency situations like _planes crashing in the middle of the goddamn landing day festival._

“Ma’am—please get down, we have orders to clear the perimeter, it isn’t safe for civilians.” A hand clamped on her shoulder, and Pidge reared on a man donning a Garrison Academy uniform.

“I can’t.” The words left her mouth unfiltered, startled. “I can’t find my friend, and I’m not leaving until I find him.”

“I assure you ma’am, where ever your friend is, he’s safe, but you have to get down and away from the bench. As a Garrison officer I have the authority to arrest you if you resist.” The officer, Officer Dickwad as far as Pidge was concerned, flashed his badge for her to see, as if the uniform and pompous attitude weren’t enough for her to discern that he was who he said he was.

All at once, the Garrison officer had absolutely three percent of her total attention, drawn by a sound that sent urgent chills down her spin; a child, the little girl from the crowd with her noise-maker and her clever problem solving skills, crying. The little girl wasn’t far from a roofed bus-stop, hugging her knees and tears slipping down her red cheeks. Her parents weren’t in the vicinity. Officer Dickwad’s qualms were priority negative infinity as she hopped down from the bench. The officer’s qualms must have started and stopped with her display on the park bench, because he was gone as soon as she was crouching down next to the little girl.

“Hey sweetie, what are you doing all alone?” Pidge whispered. Her mother did always say if there was one weakness Pidge had, it was children, no matter how much she claimed they were disgusting with their tears and their gross habits of picking their noses. Her brother Matt would always follow up the claim with how great an aunt she would be one day. Recalling the fact sent a pang of sadness through her, quickly overwhelmed by the sniveling child in front of her.

“I can’t find my mommy and daddy.” The little girl cried into her bare arm, snot and tears smearing across the child’s skin. That answered where her parents went, at least, probably wherever Lance managed to find himself too.

“Alright, alright. Well, we’re going to find them okay? That work with you?” Pidge asked with a grin, she hoped, was reassuring. As reassuring to a child as a promise from a stranger could get.

Across the park, the smoke was beginning to clear. Garrison officers were swarming the place, getting civilians far from the crash site, and investigating the plane in-between. The plane was odd, a newer model Pidge was sure, but what stuck out to her the most was what was literally sticking out of the plane. She wasn’t an expert on planes, or vehicles for that matter, but she could recognize what fuel looked like, and she could also conclude that fuel wasn’t supposed to be leaking out of the fuel tank. The fuel tank also wasn’t supposed to be sticking out of a plane, for that matter. At least, not when the plane was littered with fire.

“Officer—” Pidge whipped around, shouted, tried to get Officer Dickwad’s attention while he was in the middle of patronizing an elderly lady clearly trying her best to maneuver away from the scene. Then, what Pidge was sure was highly-combustible fuel did exactly what she expected it to do around so much heat. It combusted.

For not the first time in her life, Pidge hid behind a bus-stop. The little girl screamed from her spot, tucked away in Pidge’s arms while the woman tried her absolute best to make sure her body shielded the child. Pidge’s ears rang, but she figured that was normal when a plane combusts less than a block away from you. She felt like the ground was vibrating, her body was at the very least. Never in her life did she think she would ever feel so monumentally grateful for a bus-stop.

 

 

 

Lance found his way back to her a good hour after the incident while an emergency responder was checking her over for injuries. Nothing broken according to the lady sporting an EMS patch, a few bruises and a sprained wrist from dashing to safety behind the bus-stop with the kid. The kid was fine too, blissfully reunited with her parents and a lollipop in her mouth for being such a good sport during her check-up.

“Pidge!” Lance sighed in relief at the sight of her, just as the emergency responder was packing up to assist their next patient. Caramel hands were on her shoulders as Lance looked her over for himself. “Did you see that plane blow up?”

“Did I?” Pidge scoffed, rolling her eyes. She sported a grin like a bona fide badass. “I had to tuck and roll with a kid to make sure we didn’t _die_.”

“Are you stupid? _How_ were you so close? Jesus Pidge, where the hell did you even find a kid?”

“Calm down there, _mom_. I’m alive aren’t I? There was a kid crying, I tried to help her find her parents, next thing you know shit hits the fan so bad the fan explodes. I turned out fine.”

“Oh I see, I show concern and now I'm a doting parent. Well, if being worried for you makes me a mom consider yourself adopted, because I worried my ass off for you.”

Pidge’s look softened and she lightly punched Lance’s shoulder. “While I appreciate the worry, I'm in one piece. No need to worry your glorious bottom out of existence.”

“Oh you are so lucky I'm a sucker for compliments,” Lance started, eyes narrowing. He relaxed with a sigh, running a hand through his locks. “What time is it?”

Pidge checked the time on her phone. Eight? God, you’ve got to be kidding her—the sun was already calling it a day. “Eightish. Why? You got a hot date?”

Lance’s cheeks grew a tad darker, barely noticeable to the human eye, but Pidge was trained in the art of deciphering Lance. She knew his response before he even dained to open his mouth and confirm, without an ounce of humility, “Yeah, actually. That cute brunette was free tonight. I think I'm going to get a little more than just digits if you know what I mea—”

“Ew ew ew, no.” Pidge declared, throwing her hands up as a symbolic buffer between her ears and the filth Lance was spilling. “Gross. I don't wanna know. How a doorman gets as much bedroom traffic as you do is both disgusting and mysterious.”

“I'm telling you, it's the Cu—”

“—the Cuban charm I _know_. What time’s your date?”

“I’d say in about ten minutes, tops.”

“Jesus Christ, you're the worst bestie ever. And date. You know you're supposed to be early for dates right?” Pidge spat.

“The place is right around the corner, it's just drinks.” Lance defended with a smile. “I can walk you back to your place, if you want. I can imagine you're a little shaken.”

“Actually,” Pidge stopped to think about it a moment. Few lingered around the park, it had been a solid hour since the Garrison swooped in with its cleanup crew to take care of the mess. No casualties, thankfully. Just injuries and plane wreckage. “I think I'm good.”

“Pidge, you just had the shit scared out of you, your wrist is wrapped. I can reschedule the date _let me take you_ _home_.” Lance insisted.

Normal people would be shaken by what could be classified as a near-death-experience. Pidge wasn't, and maybe that meant she wasn’t normal, or maybe the past few hours’ events just hadn't hit her system yet, but she felt fine.  No panic, no trauma, barely a sprained wrist. “Lance, really. I'm perfectly fine, I'm pretty sure your date would suffer more than I would.”

By the expression on Lance’s face, he wasn’t buying her claims. But, the earnest expression Pidge gave him seemed to convince him, reasonably. He relented, “I’m taking your word on this Pidge, and I mean it. If something’s wrong, you call me. No hesitation. Deal?”

She grinned smugly, “Deal. Not that I need a knight in shining armor.”

“Every princess needs a knight Pidge.”

“Yeah, but maybe not her doorman?”

“It’s a part-time job and you _know_ it. You know what, I hope you get pestered by every flower-stand guy on your way home.”

Pidge dismissed his threat with a snort, waving him off as she stuck her hands in the pockets of her hoodie. It was time she started heading home before the Chinese food place across from her apartment closed, “Have fun Lance, don’t forget to tip the bartender. That kind of shit is asking for karma to come and bite you in the ass.”

He tossed a comeback over his shoulder as he retreated in the opposite direction, something snarky and sharp—just the way they had taught each other. God, how Pidge adored Lance, truly, but sometimes he was too much. A little too social, way too flirty, a dirty rotten social-pusher. So what that Pidge lived alone and was best friends with her doorman? She didn’t like people, Lance just happened to be an exception to the clause. She was never a social person, and probably never would be if she had it her way. She was perfectly content with the state of her affairs as they were. Wouldn’t change it for the world.

The sidewalks were terribly crowded. She was sure it was a result of all the festival excitement, both planned and unplanned. Either way, Pidge wasn’t the only one getting completely soaked when the dark sky decided to drop an unholy amount of water on its unsuspecting victims below.

“Son of a bitch.” Pidge swore, tugging her hood up over her curls. Not that it helped significantly, in a battle of cloth vs. rain, rain won every time. At the very least, it would keep her head somewhat dry while she searched for an alternate path home.

There was always the subway, but that only worked in the afternoon to avert the street traffic her and Lance would have faced before the festival. Now, with the addition of rain, she was better off avoiding the subway like the plague.

Walking was fine with her, she needed to stretch her legs anyways, too long cooped up in her apartment. The rain was unappreciated, but she had an alternate solution in mind. Just because she had to walk home, didn’t mean she had to take the path in the rain. If there was one thing Pidge learned when she was a teenager and full of mischief, it was how to find her way around the city without getting caught, by _anyone_. The alleys were perfect for that, and, bonus, most of them offered more coverage than the open sidewalks. She knew them like the back of her hand. She would be home in no time, hopefully not completely soaked to the bone.

It had been a good long time since she had traveled via the alleys. The sidewalks and subways were usually more convenient when she needed to go Amistad Park deep into the city, which wasn’t often. She wasn’t worried about getting lost, all the alleyways in Garrison tended to loop back around at some point. She wouldn’t be lost too terribly long.

Pidge wished she had wandered into the alleys sooner. While the fire escapes above her head saved her from the rain for the most part, they didn’t do much against the wind that creeped inside her damp clothes and chilled her to the bone. She used the home app installed on her phone to ensure the heat would be cranked up in her apartment by the time she made it back.

The wind blew a terrible gust of wind that whipped through the alley and rattled the empty garbage cans set out next to the formidable dumpsters she passed every now and then on her trek. She was no doctor, and that’s exactly why she allowed herself to jump to the dramatic conclusion that she would surely be exposed to hypothermia soon. Dramatic? Yes. Did she care? No.

“Fuck a duck!” Pidge squawked, leaping away from a downed garbage can as the wind howled. It tumbled, empty, on its side. She relaxed, standing beneath a fire escape. Her limbs were folded against her chest, trying to keep herself warm. Her cheeks felt ice-cold to the touch.

She watched the empty disheveled trash can warily as she took a few steps backwards. The alleys were never frightening to her, but even she had to admit when you couple them with a stormy, windy night and a light trash can, it made for jump scares galore. She glared at the garbage bin, and felt her back run into someone. The warmth of another person out of nowhere startled her, but she didn’t make a peep as she glanced up to look at her unwitting companion. How peculiar, their eyes glowed yellow.

Pidge was a logical person. She could make sense of almost anything you put in front of her. Computers. Programming. Security systems. She was a master of science and engineering, there wasn’t anything a person could throw at her that would stump her. She blinked at the glowing yellow eyes.

 

Pidge screamed.

 


	2. Hunk Has A Shitty Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tsuyoshi, Hunk to anyone concerned, is having the shittiest day of his entire life—and that's saying something, given the incident. Life gave him some bitter, rotten lemons and that's about all he has to survive with. Welcome to Earth.
> 
> "Did you think that your feet had been bound  
> By what gravity brings to the ground?  
> Did you feel you were tricked  
> By the future you picked?  
> Well, come on down"
> 
> \- Peter Gabriel, "Down to Earth"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woop Woop I did it again let's hope I keep this up. Yikes. I got a lovely comment last time, so I wanna impress again.

    Now, Hunk liked to consider himself an optimist, but he had to classify today as the second most stressful day of his entire life. Second only to _the incident_ , but that was an _entirely_ different situation that the one he faced now. _The incident_ didn’t happen to entail hurtling through hundreds of miles of atmosphere. Stars, he was going to die, and it wasn’t even going to be on his own planet. Talk about some shitty circumstances.

    “ _Kairp_.” Hunk swore in his native tongue. He wasn’t much for profanity, but exceptions could be made when one’s stolen escape pod was mid-way through completing its fiery descent to a foreign, and last time he checked, hostile planet. He should have never trusted that guard, it was a stupid mistake. If there was one thing _the incident_ was supposed to teach him, it was to never trust a Galra.

    He could do this, he had about a good five minutes before he met a violent fiery death. It was a pretty tight time constraint, but he had survived worse with less, so he had only slightly terrible odds.

    He fiddled with two of the wire hanging loose from the destroyed control panel he had mangled in order to get control of the fiery deathtrap he was playing passenger to. No spark. Stars kill him, he was trying desperately to find a way out of the shit situation he was abruptly thrust into, and he _desperately_ needed a spark.

    The engines were toast, both of them, and there was nothing he could do about the pod crashing, but at the very least it would be handy to control _where_ he crashed. He would take an open field over an endless body of water any day. If only he could get the steering back online before the foreboding ocean just below the belt of land he was going for became too close for comfort. The infuriating part was the difference between land and water was only a matter of two wires. Two wires that refused to spark.

    There had to be _some_ way he could get some sparks between the wires. Surely the stubborn forces of the universe, hell bent on his suffering, could take the slightest pity on him. He narrowed his eyes at the colored rubber around the frayed wires; red and black. Something wasn’t right, and he could figure out what it was. The wires were supposed to be red and _green_ , like sweet bourjookas. Now unless someone went against every shred of shuttlery common-sense—Hunk reached deeper into the control panel, yellow eyes glowing—then there should be a green wire right about—there.

    Hunk made a small noise of victory, retrieving the green wire and rubbing it between his less-than-nimble fingers. He pressed the two wire ends together. Finally, a spark. Now he was cooking with oil. The stolen pod didn’t offer much in terms of space, but what it lacked in room it well made up with ease of controls—when they functioned, that is. He wriggled into the pilot’s seat, thanking every higher power that whomever designed the shuttle at least designed the pilot’s seat with bigger guys like him in mind. The last thing he needed to worry about while crashing to Earth was whether or not he fit in the commanding seat.

    He stared at the steering controls for all of .000008 seconds before he took hold of the wheel with his large hands. This was supposed to be the easy part, steering the pod and himself away from what had to be certain death. All he had to do was think of it like a simulator, like the virtual consoles he fiddled around with as a kid. No big deal, the only difference was when he died in this scenario, he probably wasn’t going to respawn. No pressure.

    The air in his lungs felt like it was suffocating him as the pod’s nose dipped upwards and away from the glassy surface of water. A quarter mile ahead between him and land, a quarter and a half downwards between him and crashing. This was not at all what he signed up for when he asked for the universe to deal him a better hand in life. In fact, this seemed like the exact opposite of what he had prayed for. All he could do was roll with it, and try not to die. Easy enough.

    Half a quarter mile ahead between him and land, a little more than that downwards between him and crashing. He was still above water, and not particularly in the sights of anyone that may be scanning the cloudy afternoon sky for a crashing shuttle. If he crashed in the water, he would be through. No one accounts for the possibility of crashing in an ocean when they design shuttles. Pity, Hunk could think of at least one situation in which water-landing tech would come in handy. His situation.

    The shuttle’s nose angled further up in the direction of the sun. Hunk knew he should be gentle with the shambled remains of the barely functioning pod, but he also knew he had other plans on this foreign planet that didn’t include dying. He absolutely refused to die drowning, forces of the universe be damned.

    “ _Reese, reese, reese_.” Hunk pleaded, eyes flitting from the sea to the sky. If anything up there was watching his back, anything at all, please. Please don’t let him die drowning on some planet he doesn’t call home. He pulled the steering back as far as he could without flipping the shuttle, and hoped. Everything else was out of his control. His only choice was to sit and wait and pray while his heart beat against his rib cage like a drum. He wanted to see home again.

    The shuttle passed over land unceremoniously like the pod itself was aware of its existence but unaware of how dearly it had just saved Hunk’s life. Breathing was a painful, laborious effort, but stars did it feel good to still be breathing. He whooped, a hand clutching at the indigo fabric covering his chest.

    He wasn’t going to die today, not by drowning. He was, however, going to die in a mess of metal and glass if he didn’t get his hands back on the wheel and veer out of the way of a large building taller than the tallest tree he had ever seen. It took at heart attack and reflexes Hunk never knew he had, but he managed to swerve out of the way of the skyscraper and directly into the path of another one. He had prayed for land, he really had, but he had honestly been hoping said land would be a tad more open. Perhaps, open in the sense that every time he dodged a building that there wouldn’t be another one right behind it ready to put a damper on his course of travel.

    Five. He had dodged five enormous buildings and the ground was only getting closer and closer. There was no telling when he would find a patch of land clear enough to attempt a landing, but at this rate, he was running out of options. He turned sharply around the corner of a particularly large building, and had all of a split second to breathe before he laid eyes on a clear patch of green. There was clearly a crowd of planet-dwellers there, that he could see. He didn’t have a choice, he absolutely couldn’t land in a crowd like that, he would be detained and stars-knows what else if any of them laid eyes on him. He would have to find another way.

    Hunk moved to squeeze the shuttle between two buildings. He didn’t account for the shorter office tower right behind the two tall buildings. He tried to swerve the shuttle out of the way, and he was nearly successful, if it weren’t for the pod catching the very corner of the building _just right_. The windshield was as useful as an expired coupon, offering exactly zero view of the potentially disastrous area he would be crash landing. He took the time to buckle the safety harness on the pilot’s seat. He was crashing through a building, and he wasn’t about to entrust his survival in whether or not the artificial gravity didn’t get taken out in the crash.

    The shuttle rattled and everything was submerged in the screeching of metal on metal as escape pod brawled with building and Hunk was fairly positive the shuttle was going to lose the battle. He had come to far to die. He really, really hoped this didn’t end with him dying. He sat with bated breaths as the artificial gravity gave way and the planet’s pull took hold and threatened to throw him away from the pilot’s seat if it weren’t for the safety restraints. He thought of his planet, and his people, and his family, even as metal continued to scream with friction and the shuttle tumbled like a crushed, fiery tin can, to the ground.

  
  


    When Hunk woke up the only things he was completely aware of were a searing pain in his right arm and that everything was much, _much_ too hot for any living creature to bear. Smoke stung at his eyes like clouds of dirt as he gathered his bearings. Beyond the shuttle he could hear chaos, but that was a whisper compared to the roar of havoc in the shuttle. He locked eyes with growing flames, hungry tendrils licking at the inside of the shuttle and consuming it. He wasn’t dead yet, but if he didn’t act fast, he was going to be.

    A gear clicked into place in his mind, an ancient and natural instinct for survival no matter the cost, and he was fast at work dismantling the pilot restrains and removing them from his person. He feared the crowd he could be caught by outside the shuttle, but he feared the scorching blaze more. He was forced to pick the lesser of two evils, and while he wasn’t particularly a fan of being surrounded by a hostile species, he was even less of a fan of burning alive.

    The restraints came loose with a poke and prod, a single moment of the universe pitying Hunk and his struggle. The smoke burned his lungs like there was a fire in his chest. He pulled the collar of his filthy shirt up and over his nose. Suffocation was a no better way to go than burning alive. Through the haze of black smoke, he could barely make out the exit hatch. Maneuvering around a crumpled tin-can of a shuttle was in hindsight more difficult than he expected, but with a spreading flame less than a foot away from him, he found the motivation to make himself as small as possible against the pod wall to get to the exit hatch.

    He braced himself against the hatch door, running through a million and one terrible, disastrous scenarios in his head in which he was either killed, mauled or imprisoned—again. He stared at a tattered cloak hanging next to the hatch. It didn’t belong to him, rather, it belonged to one of the Galran prison keepers that tried to stop him from making his escape. Hunk grabbed the cloak and threw it on without a moment’s hesitation. It wasn’t a perfect disguise, not in the slightest, but it covered his smooth dark flesh and masked his face with shadows. He grasped the handle on the hatch and pushed it open with all of his might.

    Cold fresh air hit him and sparked the fire in his lung back to life with a cold burn, a burn that reassured him that he was alive and the planet Hunk-habitable. The chaos from inside the shuttle was reciprocated beyond its walls. People were fleeing, but as Hunk dashed as far away from the shuttle and into the crowd as he could, he realized no one was aware of his presence. The humans were not fleeing from him, they were fleeing from the crashed escape pod. He felt a twinge of guilt, a responsibility for the destruction all around him, the panicked fear on passerbys’ faces that spoke of the fear he had caused. His bleeding heart ached, but his instinctual sense of survival overrode any guilt he felt. He fled from the crowd, disappearing into the dark alleyways like a thief in the night.

  
  


    Night fell sooner on this planet than Hunk’s home. He noticed that first, among many other things while he waited in a dingy alleyway for the sun to dip below the horizon. He had settled on the first empty alleyway he found in his urgent journey through the untraveled passageways to wait in. Traveling in daylight was too risky, and after a day full risks that could have had horribly catastrophic result, he could use some caution.

    A chance to sit in the relative safety of an alley was appreciated. It gave him time to ultimately rest and consider what his plan of action was. Honestly, he didn’t think he would make it as far as Earth alive. Up until the point when he could rest his sore muscles against a relieving cool dumpster, his every move had been based solely on surviving. It was easy to make plans in an immediate life or death situation, but give him time and no outstanding current threat to his life, and he couldn’t tell up from down in terms of a plan. He had nowhere to go, he knew absolutely no humans on the face of the Earth—how could he? Earth was never apart of the galactic coalition. Besides being a blue dot on maps of the galaxy, and research conducted on the human population centuries ago, there was nothing known about the planet. At least, nothing that would help Hunk navigate his way around.

    This sucked. Big time. He wasn’t supposed to be alone, and yet here he was resting against a metal tub of waste in a filthy alley that almost put the dumpster to shame. Hunk sighed, glowing eyes drifting shut in something akin to defeat. He leaned his head back against the brick back of a building. It wasn’t the most lavish place, his hiding space, but if a single human noticed him leave the crashed shuttle then hidden was the best place to be should authorities try to seek him out.

    He felt like a fish hiding on land; suffocating, out of place, lost. His sharp teeth dug into his lips’ sensitive skin to keep an onslaught of an increasingly familiar emotion at bay. He swallowed the lump of grief rising in his throat and buried it deep. If he let himself dwell on the dark gray feeling that ate at his heart, then he would no longer be a fish suffocating on land, but a man drowning. He couldn’t be a man drowning, and he could not remain a fish suffocating on land. He had a duty and a task to fulfill. There would be a time and a place for drowning, but he would not arrive at that time or place until the job was finished. For now, he would watch the Earth’s sky shift from brilliant shades of flaming orange to deep lilac and finally, to an enchanting, endless black.

  
  


    The sudden intruder in the alleyway was what startled him awake first, before the cold howling wind brought him to full focus. The intruder’s footsteps were light on the damp ground, like the footsteps of the small patter-rodents that used to roam Hunk’s home freely, but Hunk had learned to sleep with one eye open given the circumstances. Before _the incident_ , he could sleep through an asteroid crash, when he was home and home was safe. Home had been foreign for a while now, and it was even longer than that since he shut his eyes and felt safety’s embrace.

    He was on alert, crouched behind the dumpster as the human passed him by without a second glance. He wasn’t the only one in the alleyway who was startled—the human was too, he could tell by the way they moved with hesitation, shifted their head all around like they were suddenly surrounded by a stealthy army they couldn’t see, held their limbs close to their body. Hunk watched the human angle their sights to the skies above them and was possessed by the small facial features the moonlight seeping through the grates above illuminated.

    The human pressed on down the alley, and Hunk resolved it was time for him to begin his trek, too, wherever it would lead him. He followed the same path as the human, at a distance, he hardly wanted to be caught after all. He wondered if there were a lot of humans as tiny as the one he was trailing behind. He had heard that humans looked similar to the ancient peoples of Altea, but he had never seen one in the flesh, at least one that wasn’t fleeing in panic from a crashed shuttle sight.

    This human, he decided, was a peculiar one, walking all alone in the decrepit alley. Maybe it was natural for the human species to prefer the dark and solitude. This human in particular sauntered around like the alleyways were their natural habitat. Sounded like a cold dark life to Hunk.

    A powerful gust of wind blew a garbage bin to the ground and the human squawked in what had to be the most primitive language Hunk had ever heard in his life. His nose crinkled at the sound of it, so harsh and coarse to his ears. The human bristled and sympathy hit Hunk like a landslide. The being was startled, and it showed when their legs took small, trembling steps backwards. Hunk was stopped in his tracks, head tilted at the gentle being. Their fists emerged from their sleeves in the dark, clenching at their sides. Such a small thing—even the way they moved when they were so frightened was mesmerizingly graceful.

    Hunk watched them breathlessly as the human closed the distance between their back and his chest. He had seen many a beings in his lifetime, but never a human so close—they were fascinating. The human was so tiny it didn’t each his broad shoulders. Its head thudded gently against his torseo but the human didn’t spook.

    It tilted its head up, angling it high towards Hunk’s frozen face, and at last the moonlight illuminated the human in all its glory. Their skin was gorgeous, like velvety peaches dusted with a brown spackling of stars. The human’s hair looked incredibly soft, framing a delicate jawline—a female of the species, maybe, Hunk wasn’t an expert on human anatomy. But their eyes, they were perhaps the most prepossessing things he had ever seen on an organic being. His eyes burned like he was going to cry. Cry those tears that one sheds when something is so beautiful they’re overwhelmed with the sudden knowledge that the universe is a kaleidoscope of beauty and you only have so long to peer through its tube until you have to pass it to the next kid in line.

    Those eyes, glowing in the moonlight like his own glowed in the shadows, stared up at him. Primrose lips parted, lips that looked so fragile Hunk was sure this human was made of glass. The human’s lips parted.

 

    The human screamed.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bourjookas - A sweet fruit native to Hunk's home planet. Similar to strawberries  
> Reese - Please  
> Kairp - Shit (informal;slang)
> 
> Remember I live off feedback. Any kind. ANY. Ahem. Thanks again.


	3. Pidge Makes Questionable Decisions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge comes face-to-horns with the other occupant of the dingy alleyway and makes questionable decisions that may or may not come back to bite her in the ass later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "It was late a night  
> You'd held on tight  
> From an empty sea  
> A flash of light."
> 
> "Space Song" - Beach House

**Friday, December 3, 2037 10:22 P.M. EST Garrison City, New York**

****

    Pidge stumbled away, shrieking, and over her own screams, a new voice emerged. The _thing_ —yes _thing_ , that’s what she was going to call mister-glowing-eyes right now because _nothing_ on the face of Earth makes a noise like _that_ —was screeching right alongside her. It was unbearable, such a high pitched noise, like a screaming beetle. She cringed inwardly, but outwardly her fists were balled and raised up between her and _Screechy_ —new name, better fitting for now. Screechy looked at her with those inhuman glowing eyes and Pidge had half a mind to smack the creature upside the head until the horrid noise stopped. Screechy had no reason to be screaming, she was the one cornered in an alley by an abomination, _she_ should be screaming, _her_.

    Her legs felt like a newborn horse’s. Screechy fell silent, mouth clamping shut, right before he started up again, volumes quieter, pausing in-between beetle-like noises. They were words.

    “Oh holy shit.” Pidge cursed, words shaky. Her knuckles were white, fists balled too tight, body entirely too cold. “You’re trying to talk to me—holy crap. This is real. Whatever you are, you’re real. Oh _christ_.”

    Screechy kept on going, and with every new burst of stringed together speech, he took a shy step forward, too small for Pidge to notice at first. The gap between her and him was growing too small for her comfort, far too small.

    “Woah there— _no_ .” Pidge snapped, pointing a finger at Screechy like her appendage was suddenly a blade and she suddenly knew how to wield it. “Stay _right there_.”

    Screechy paused, head tilted to the side like he couldn’t quite understand what Pidge was talking about. Of course he didn’t know what she was talking about, she was speaking English and he was speaking creepy-alley-monster-speak, typical. His confusion didn’t deter him long because he was right back to trying to close the distance between them both, and Pidge was not having it, not today.

    For each step he took forward, she skipped backwards blindly. Her warnings didn’t seem to be penetrating the clearly present language barrier, but that didn’t stop Pidge from trying either. “Stop. _Do not_ come any closer _so help me god_.”

    She lost her footing, doomed to whatever grizzly death Screechy surely had planned for her by none other the horridly loud trash-can, out to get her again. Pidge fell backwards, arms flailing about to catch herself on anything that wasn’t the grimy ground. She landed flat on her ass, and banged her wrist against the convoluting trash-can. Her yelp reverberated off the brick alley walls, and succeeded in doing what her sharp-tongued warnings could not: it stopped Screechy in his tracks.

    Screechy’s glowing eyes softened, and she followed their gaze to her wrist, the one she hurt when that plane crashed in the middle of the festival. She realized all at once that she had Screechy all wrong when he began to move ever so closer, like he was approaching a wild animal, until the moonlight left him exposed to her in full color. Screechy wasn't shy or scared, he was curious.

    Pidge’s lips pursed as she stared up at him from the ground, holding her wrist loosely to her chest. Screechy was so hesitant, so anxious to startle her as he creeped closer and, as he knelt in front of her, held out a large hand to her. His clothes were in tatters, some funky purple colored material with dark splotches here and there. His hand, larger than the largest human hand she had ever seen, with its four fingers and dark sage skin, was cool to the touch beneath her warm exposed wrist. Pidge let Screechy do as he wished with her wrist, and it seemed his wish was to examine it with his ever glowing, curious eyes. He wasn't the only one examining with curiosity.

    “You aren't from around here.” Pidge stated simply. Yes, she felt like she was talking to a brick wall, a very large, foreign, and living wall, but she felt she got her message across when Screechy paused in the act of gushing over her wrist to fix her with a puzzled look, thick brows drawn tight. Surely Pidge had finally gone over the deep end, reached that perfect state where her day was so completely chaotic that not even the supernatural, entirely inhuman being acting as a pseudo-nurse for her right now, could distress her. Screechy was very bulky for such a gentle monster-beetle-Pidge-honestly-has-no-idea-what-he-is thing. “I’ve never met a lug that looked like you before.”

    Screechy dismissed her comments with an airy noise. She sensed he was amused, her prattling on to him despite knowing profoundly that none of what she was saying was getting through to him. Still, it wasn’t like she had some sort of travel translator for in-case-of-meeting-alley-monsters emergencies.

    “You’re a funny looking thing aren’t you?” Pidge asked with a murmur. Screechy looked deep in thought, at least, she thought he did. He poked at her wrist with blunt claws, brows furrowed in his concentration.

    Truthfully, Pidge had calmed down. She knew it was against virtually everything she had ever been taught in life not to be losing every last one of her shits right now, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She had a hell of a day, from the plane crash, to the rain, to having a heart attack in the alleyway, and now, having her wrist tended to by something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory. She couldn’t give less of a damn, she was tired, and cold, and holy shit Screechy was ripping his little cape—cloak, that’s what it was called, and absolutely no one on Earth still wore cloaks, but that was the last thing she was going to question right about now.

    “Hey, hey, _hey_. What are you doing man?” Pidge asked, leaning forward with her hands waving about like some freaky-deaky version of jazz hands.

    Screechy stopped mid-rip, looking to her questioningly. His eyes voiced his confusion, and holy dang were those glowing suckers expressive. Pidge was impressed.

    She shook her head vehemently. “You don’t want to rip that, it’s cold out here. And raining. Cold and raining sucks ass. You want that to be in one piece, you feeling me?”

    Screechy was confused, a little frown befalling his face dejectedly.

    “No, no, no I didn’t mean to like, refuse your help or anything. It’s just…” Pidge trailed off because he was giving her this blank face. He didn’t understand her. God dammit, why didn’t all alley monsters naturally come knowing English. Just her luck. “How do I get you to understand, huh? It’s cold genius, you need the warmth.”

    Pidge’s shoulders slacked, cheeks puffed out. AlleyMonsterTM, better name since he stopped screeching, wasn’t connecting the dots. She would have to connect them for him.

    “It’s cold,” She mimed shivering, putting her hands on her arms and rubbing them up and down before pointing at his tattered cloak. " _This_ keeps you warm.”

    His eyes lit up in understanding and Pidge grinned ear to ear. Then, he started taking the cloak off to give to her.

    “No—jesus man, no. I’ve got a jacket keep your cloak.” She groaned, pushing back against the ball of cloth he was trying to thrust into her arms. “I’ve got an apartment, y’know? You’ve got this...alley.”

    It finally seemed to click with him, because he wrapped his cloak back around his shoulders, but not before ripping the rest of the strip he had been tearing clean off. He pointed at Pidge’s wrist with a big clawed finger, a jut on his lips.

    “My wrist? You want to see it again eh doc?” She hummed, sticking her arm back out to him. He took it like she was made of glass, the gentlemonster. He was a peculiar thing, Pidge concluded, especially when he took the little tattered strip of cloth and wrapped it around her wrist.

    She looked at her wrist, at the cloth that wrapped around it and tied so neatly where her veins and pulse resided. He was staring at her, like he expected her to critique his nursemanship. She didn’t, afterall, it was more than the first responder did. She doubted it was strictly necessary for the wellbeing of her wrist, but who would she be to question AlleyMonster™’s kindness?

    “How’d you wind up in a dump like this big guy?” Pidge asked at last, leaning back against the brick wall comfortably. The building she leaned against had a small balcony off the fire-escape, a balcony that offered the remaining coverage a grate lacked. She wasn’t entirely keen on spending much more time in the dingy alley, but AlleyMonster™ was a curveball she didn’t expect life to pitch, and if there was one thing that Pidge enjoyed more than anything, it was figuring out curveballs. Even the ones of the alarming nature.

    AlleyMonster™ looked at her with something like amusement, settling in beside her against the wall. He wasn’t so terribly frightening up close, not like when he spooked her after the wind blew the trashcan all about. In fact, he looked pretty friendly just sitting peacefully next to her. His teeth were like a kitten’s, and even the little horn-like nubs protruding from his face and arms were round and harmless.

    Pidge gazed at him, a puzzle for her to solve. There was no telling what he was, who he was, how he got there, when, where he came from. He looked as cold as she felt in the wet and cold. He couldn’t possibly be warm, not in those ripped clothes of him, not in this dirty alley.

 

    Now, Pidge has made some bad decisions in her lifetime. A lot of terrible, terrible decisions. But, as she looked back at the towering figure following her around like a baby duckling, she decided to classify this decision under the category of ‘bad decisions that hopefully won’t blow up in her face this time.’

    “Sorry about the tarp big guy, it’s the only thing in the workshop I had that would hide you.” Pidge whispered apologetically, leading AlleyMonster™  up the narrow staircase of her apartment building. It was late in the evening, leaning towards the better part of two in the morning, and the halls were thankfully empty. It had taken her two hours alone to find a way to get him to her workshop just outside of her building to begin with, and then from there it was a matter of fashioning an old car tarp into something that would disguise her knew friend from any wandering eyes.

    “I know you’re not a car,” Pidge muttered, sticking her keys into the door labeled with her apartment number. It unlocked with a click, and she pushed it open with an air of exhaustion around her. Her night wasn’t over yet, not nearly. “just bear with me, yeah?”

    Her apartment was as she left it, though somehow she expected to walk in and find it completely upside down, like her day had been thus far. Everything was untouched, not a single chair in her cramped living room was out of place. The apartment in its entirety wasn’t much to gawk at, but it suited her and her lifestyle. There was a small kitchenette that connected with the living room, a laundry room and linen closet down the small hallway from that, her bedroom, and then her conjoined bathroom. Of course, it was only designed to house her, not the mysterious, hulking creature she befriended in the alley, but they would make due until she got down to the bottom of what made him such a mystery to begin with. It would be okay. It wouldn’t blow up in her face.

    God, Lance was going to kill her. There was not listening to stranger danger and then there was bringing home alley monsters like they were stray cats. Both warranted varying amounts of fury. Pidge would like to think that Lance would warm up to AlleyMonster™ like he would a random kitty she brought home, but she had always been a logical person for the most part, and logic said she would be grasping at invisible straws.

    “First thing’s first big guy…” She sighed, tired to the bone, but persevering. “We need to get you out of those clothes.”

    He stared at her quizzically, his usual go-to expression it seemed for everytime she opened her mouth to say anything he clearly couldn’t understand. That’s fine, she could swing with communication via charades. English would be nice. Then again, a nap for eternity and a lack of her guest would be nice too, but neither of those were looking too likely anytime soon, so she would have to deal.

    “Don’t give me that look, get your head out of the gutter. They’re sopping wet and stained, you’ll get a cold at this rate.” Pidge muttered, pointing to the sofa. It was micro-suede and new, but a giant monster in wet clothes wasn’t going to harm it too terribly, she hoped. “Strip and sit.”

    He gave her the no-comprendo look, and she was starting to get plum tired of seeing that expression on his face. Charades was a pain in the ass.

    “Look.” She unzipped her hoodie and tossed the wet garment on the floor. She gestured to him. “Your turn.”

    No-comprendo. Still. God, kill her. Just smite her now, because she was getting absolutely nowhere and she wasn’t prepared to take her shirt nor her jeans off in front of a humanoid she happened to find in a dirty alley. She would just have to do this the slightly harder way, the way that was only slightly easier than continuing to strip. Here goes her pride.

    “Alright big guy, you’re not doing me any favors here, so I’m just gonna have to take matters into my own hands. That cool with you?” She murmured, pulling him by the wrist to the front of the plush couch. She stood on the wooden coffee table, using the leverage to remove the tarp that was clipped around his shoulders and discard it where her wet hoodie was laid to soaking rest.

    In the orange light of her apartment, his eyes didn’t glow, but even flat as they were, their yellow was warm. Pidge bit her lip. From her post on the coffee table, they were even in height. “Is it cool with you if I take your shirt off?”

    The purple cloth that clinged to her guest’s skin could barely be called a shirt in her opinion. Holes littered it like a graveyard, leaving frigid skin exposed to the air and the light. Still, it would rude to go taking his clothes off without so much as asking him, even if he couldn’t understand him.

    “Just...start screeching if you’re not okay, for any reason. Deal?” Pidge breathed. Sure, they were matched in height, but head on it was hard not to take notice how literal her fond nickname for him was. Big guy. She wasn’t sure the couch would be large enough for him to sleep on, but they would have to make it work. As long as he doesn’t go ballistic on her the second she starts to take his clothes off. It was doubtful, given how calm his nature seemed to be, but even Pidge wasn’t without her worries.

    She took a deep breath and hooked her nimble little fingers beneath the hem of his tattered shirt, slowly lifting the cloth up to reveal more dark sage skin. She stopped, gauging his reaction for any cue to stop. There was none, instead her guest lifted his arms up, allowing her to tug the garment the rest of the way off and dispose of it in the growing pile of wet clothes.

    She leaned back and stood up straight, taking her guest in now that his short-sleeved shirt had joined the laundry on the floor. All the self-control in the world couldn’t keep her hand from flying to cover her mouth.

    Pidge’s voice wavered, even as she tried to keep her tone even, but she had always been emotional, always. “Who did this to you man?”

    His skin may not have looked like the average human’s did, but Pidge recognized the shiny mounds of discolored skin that marked her guest’s chest for what they were. Still, she had to ask, “Are these scars?”

    They varied in size and shape, location too, but Pidge knew without a shred of doubt what the lighter marks or skin were, and it threatened to bring prickling tears to her eyes. Such a gentle creature, and someone had the gaul to harm him. Sick bastards, whoever they were.

    “Genius, you’re bleeding.” She snapped and smacked his hand harshly when she caught him poking at a gnarly wound on his arm, open and covered in congealed crimson. Bleeding was a bit of an overstatement, but the injury was hardly cleaned, and that would get it nowhere but infected.

    “You’re a dumb alley monster, you know that?” She scolded, hopping down from her coffee table perch to pad into her kitchenette. She had a cabinet reserved exclusively for her medicinal odds and ends: an asthma inhaler she didn’t need anymore, a prescription for a gnarly cough she had a few months back, and the finest first aid kit she could find at Walgreens from that one time Lance decided it was a marvelous idea to rifle through her trash for a girl’s number he mistakenly threw away with his fifth beer of that night and ended up cutting himself on shattered glass. Pidge retrieved the first aid kit and shut the cabinet right back.

    “This is going to sting.” She warned a split-second before she pressed an alcohol swab to the wound.

    He hissed, like a cat, and it was all she could do not to burst out into a fit of giggles. Here he was, AlleyMonster™, big, and scary, and intimidating, and hissing at the tiny little alcohol swab doing its darndest to try, and ultimately fail, to clean the dried blood on his arm. She was starting to think she had made a mistake, perhaps she really did manage to bring home a stray cat rather than the terrifying monster she thought she had. Pity that she had to switch to a rag soaked with alcohol instead, she hated to see the tiny frown that reeked of betrayal grow. Still, it was kind of funny.

    She flicked him on the nose when he hissed again, louder this time, after she pressed the soaked rag to his wound. “Would you quit with the hissing? I’m trying to make sure this doesn’t get infected, not my favorite thing to be doing at three in the morning, so hush it.”

    That seemed to translate somehow with him, because he decided to pout facing away from her, brows bent in a tiny little _v_ shape. That was fine with Pidge, she could handle a pouty monster, as long as he kept quiet while she cleaned his arm so her neighbors didn’t wake up and call her landlord thinking she was violating the strict no-pets-allowed rule. It would hardly be the most appropriate way for her to be caught with a monster in her apartment.

    “There we go, all done. Happy now?” She asked him sometime later when he had stopped pouting in favor of exploring every inch of her apartment with his eyes, and when she had finished tying off a wrap of bandages around his arm. Not the finest first aid in the world, but a clinic wasn’t exactly an option for her unordinary guest. Though the idea of a nurse running in terror from who Pidge was beginning to learn was a gentle giant was a humorous idea.

    Pidge stood, a sigh escaping her as she looked him over. She was slowly resigning herself to the conclusion that his damp pants were not coming off, both because she couldn’t bring herself to completely undress an alley monster, and because she couldn’t see any significant holes in them that would signal any unsavory wounds like the one she found on his arm. He would just have to soldier through some wet pants for the night, at least until she found some alternative in the morning. Which, meant he was at least staying the night in her apartment, and the more Pidge dwelled on that fact, the more the realization of what she had discovered and done threatened to come back and bite her in the ass. No. She was not going to consider the consequences of her guest and her action, not until a more decent time to have a mental breakdown, and not until she at least knew what she would be calling her guest for the time being. Easier said than done, she was sure.

    Running a hand through her curls, she found that they were dry, unlike her jeans and shirt that clinged to her skin and kept the warm air from her heater from reaching her chilled skin. At least, now that she wasn’t disrobing and performing first aid on her guest, she could change.

    “Give me a second big guy, I’ll be right back. I’m going to go change while you stay put in here.” Pidge explained, making general gestures from her guest to the couch he was settled on. She was learning that gestures were her friend when trying to communicate with her guest, given he didn’t appear to understand a single word she said completely. Still, she wasn’t too worried about him abandoning his spot on the couch, he seemed entirely too invested in her apartment to be concerned with where she went in it.

    As soon as her bedroom door was shut and locked, it hit her. The wave of exhaustion she had been fighting back against from the moment she led her guest into the apartment, it was back, with a vengeance. But, she fought it back down. She had one more task to complete before she would deem it acceptable to sleep, and she had a feeling it was going to take her some time.

    She didn’t move with any sense of hurry as she changed into more comfortable, and thankfully dry clothes. Just a t-shirt and some pajama shorts, nothing she wouldn’t wear were a monster not sitting in her living room. That thought made her pause in the middle of pulling her shorts up. A monster in her living room. What an odd thing to be relevant enough to cross her mind. She had no idea where he was from, how he got in that alley, whether he was really a monster or just...she didn’t know. All she knew was that she felt the most tired he had in her entire life, and there was one thing keeping her from collapsing into the open arms of her bed.

    She didn’t know his name, and as tempting as it was to just name him ‘Monster’ and call it a night, something was gnawing at her brain and she knew it wouldn’t let her enjoy a moment of peace until she figured out what she should be calling her guest. She didn’t know how she would figure it out, but she had a few ideas of where to start.

  


    Pidge sat cross-legged on the couch across from AlleyMonster™, a notepad poised on her lap that she was drawing furiously on. She had been scribbling on the pad for a better part of five minutes, her guest watching her intently from the moment she first clicked the pen she was using to draw. Five minutes, and then she revealed the fruits of her labor.

    It was sloppy. It wasn’t worth the ink used to draw it nor the paper it was drawn on, but her doodle did its job. She flipped the pad around, displaying her drawing for her guest to see clearly. It was her, at least that was the intention, from the baggy t-shirt to the wild curls that stuck in every direction. She pointed at the drawing like it had offended her, speaking with the utmost clarity in her voice, “Pidge. I’m Pidge. That’s my name. Pidge. You understand?”

    No-comprendo face. Perfect. This was going to take as long as she had begrudgingly expected it to. More pointing, the addition of a drawn-in t-shirt design and big owl eye glasses. “Pidge. You can call me Pidge, that’s what everyone calls me. It kind of sounds like Pudge, but that’s a terrible, terrible name, so call me Pidge.”

    A spark of understanding in his eyes. Good, that was great. That was progress, now for the hard part. She ripped the page away, revealing the equally sloppy drawing underneath. It was a crude sketch of a tall figure, body shaded in with lines in pen, all except for a little area around the head that was completely blocked in. Tiny nubby horns covered the drawn figure, and lines were coming from its eyes like they were light bulbs. It was, in Pidge’s truly best attempts at drawing, him. And surprisingly, though Lance would mock and ridicule Pidge’s horrifying artistic skill, she noticed the wave of recognition that donned on her guest’s face. So her drawing wasn’t entirely terrible, that was reassuring.

    What wasn’t reassuring, was questioning look he kept giving her when he wasn’t scanning the drawing completely over. His eyes said two things: that he could tell the drawing was of him, but he couldn’t quite grasp what she wanted him to do. Something’s just couldn’t be easy for Pidge, could they?

    She was frustrated, snatching the pen back from him in a single steal and scribbling viciously underneath the drawing of herself that she had ripped from the sketchpad. For every failed approach, a new approach was therefore required.

    She held up the battered sheet of paper next to her like it was her mugshot, pointing straight at the sloppy printed script beneath the drawing that spelled out her name in bold letters. “This is me, _this_ is my _name_. Pidge. See me?” She pointed at the drawing, jabbed herself in the chest. “I am Pidge. _Pidge_.”

    She thrust the notebook back in his hands, flipped back to the drawing of him, the pen lingering on top. She was hoping for a verbal response, but if writing was all her guest could manage she supposed that would work to, she just _absolutely_ needed to know what she was supposed to call him, so her mind would leave her in peace.

    Maybe it was harsh, maybe she shouldn’t have expected him to understand her when it was obvious English wasn’t something he was familiar with, but Pidge leaned in as close and she could, jutted her finger out, and poked him in the chest right where she had jabbed herself, over her heart. “Who. Are. You.”

    She stared him straight in the eyes in a fierce clash of warm amber and honey, and she could tell, oh could she tell, she had set off comprehension like a wildfire in his eyes.

    Pidge was startled to say the least when her first suddenly broke the silence. His voice was parched, and the way he spoke was so quiet she could barely hear him, but she could make out what he was trying to say as he held up his own drawing and pointed to himself. “H—Huuu—nk.”

    “Holy shit apples.” Pidge swore with wide eyes. She scrambled for words when her guest took on a hurt look, “Nonono, I'm not insulting you I swear I'm just—surprised. I didn't think you could swing words dude, I thought the screeching thing was it.”

    His eyes were still poutingly narrowed at her like he could tell by her previous tone that shit was a member of English profanity. She couldn't hold back the grin that played on her lips as she looked at him and asked, “So Hunk, huh? That's a nice name. I'm Pidge, but I don't expect you to try pronouncing my name. Something tells me that screeching thing you do is more your style, yeah?”

    Her guest, _Hunk_ , she reminded herself, didn't flash her his no-comprendo look, but she could tell he wasn't quite grasping what she was saying. That was fine, baby steps, Rome didn't take a day to build, and neither would a means of communication between a human and an alley monster.

    For now, as she fished a blanket from the linen closet and spread it out over the back of the couch, she could settle for a name. Two throw pillows from the loveseat were sandwiched together against one of the sofa arms, and as she left Hunk to get settled on the couch, she padded away to her bedroom where she let the exhaustion of the day carry her into the comfort of her bed and the deep throes of sleep. of sleep.

****

**Saturday, December 4, 2037 11:16 A.M. EST Garrison City, New York**

****

    It was an alarming sensation to blink awake in the morning, recall the past day’s events, and still remain wholeheartedly convinced that you had dreaming the whole day. It was alarming to Pidge, at least, who had awoken that morning entirely under the impression that her encounter with her new guest was the result of a nervous breakdown via her near-death experience.

    It was a rude awakening on her part when she wandered from the warmth of her covers into her living room and found her guest sleeping soundly on the couch. Well, he hadn’t murdered her in her sleep, so she must have been right about at least the part where her guest—Hunk, she really needed to stop forgetting that—was gentle and ultimately harmless.

    Looking him over that morning, it was hard for her to believe that she had ever found him so startling, even in that alley. Sleeping so soundly, he hardly looked like a monster. He looked peaceful, kind, the spare rag-thin blanket Pidge kept on hand barely managing to cover the entirety of his lower body.

    Hunk was her guest, and until she figured out the rest of the mystery surrounding him, he was here to stay. She glanced in the direction of her laundry room where she knew her clothes and Hunk’s tattered shirt were laying in a pile to be washed. His shirt wouldn’t be salvageable, it wouldn’t even be worth the wash, and that meant Pidge would have to figure out some other clothes for Hunk that didn’t involve the rips and tears his current attire consisted of. She would have to venture away from the apartment. Gosh dammit.

    That’s how Pidge found herself in a thrift store at eleven in the morning on a Saturday, completely and utterly lost. She didn’t know where to begin looking for clothes for a towering, broad-shouldered alley monster, and she doubted there was a help desk that got that specific. Pity, that would be mighty convenient for her right about now.

    She supposed she should start with the men’s section. That seemed like the most logical place to begin. Eyeballing it, Hunk was a tall monster guy. Easily six-eight, no doubt about it, built like a doorway and a linebacker had a baby, a very large, very not human baby. Still, he was awfully friendly for something she found creeping around an alleyway. Definitely not what most people expect to find hanging around dumpsters.

    What size shirt would an alley monster wear? XL? XXL? Would Pidge wind up offending him if she got him the largest size she could find and just went with it? It was a possibility, but she wasn’t holding her breath that much she could do would incite any sort of vengeance in her guest. He seemed too docile for something like that.

    “Excuse me—ma’am?” Pidge flagged down a passing attendant, gesturing to the clothing rack she was searching through fruitlessly.

    “Yes?” The attendant, Martha according to the little name tag on her store vest, smiled at her and came around to the men’s shirts rack, all sporting different size tags.

    “I’m looking for some clothes, for a friend, but I’m not a billion percent sure what size he wears.”

    “Easy enough, I get that all the time. This _friend_ of yours,” Martha smiled coyly and Pidge didn’t like the connotations behind the way she stressed friend. Then again, it wasn’t like she could correct the attendant. She had a feeling if she started spouting about the giant monster she was hiding away in her apartment, Pidge would be dragged off to the loony bin. “is he a big guy?”

    “Huge. Pretty much a bookshelf with a face.” And glowing eyes. And little nubby charcoal horns on his face. And if Pidge wasn’t completely crazy and her eyes weren’t deceiving her when she saw a strange looking appendage resting on top of Hunk’s borrowed blanket this morning, a tail. A tail, that was weird, even weirder than the horns, oh and the attendant was laughing at her.

    “That big, huh? I take it this is a gift, so you can’t ask his size?”

    “Yeah, something like that.” She couldn’t ask his size if she wanted to. Aside from being in a dead sleep on her couch, Hunk seemed to speak exclusively in hissing, screeching, and as Pidge’s creative game of pictionary proved the night before, the occasional speech. But not English, no, god forbid she find a monster that can speak her language. That would be too easy.

    “If he’s as big of a guy as you say, I’d go with a two-x.” Martha prattled on, pulling a red t-shirt off the rack and another gray one. “Now would you say your friend is nerdy or sporty?”

    Pidge looked to the attendant and couldn’t quite bring herself to care that Martha’s smile faltered when she answered, “Which one’s cheaper?”

  


 

    Pidge returned to her apartment with two thrift-store bags on one arm and a week’s worth of groceries, if she stretched it, on the other. Her presence was made known to the other occupant of the apartment when she closed the door loudly behind her with her foot, groaning as she set the groceries down to rest on the island in the kitchen.

    A charcoal-crested head poked out from the couch as her guest fixed her with a curious look. She could tell by the way his eyes blinked with the remnants of sleep that he had only just woken up. Pidge laughed, “Someone was tuckered out, huh big guy?”

    Hunk flashed his curious expression, interesting, his usual response was his go-to no-comprendo look. Pidge could settle for curious. She grinned smally when he wandered up from the couch to investigate her haul. He hunched over the tiny island, perfectly normal sized for her, tiny in respect to the large being that was Hunk, and poked curiously at the various bags.

    “This? Let me guess, you think it’s something for you huh? What if I told you to think again, eh?” She smiled, feigning smugness. His blank expression killed her fun before it had a chance to live. She rolled her eyes, digging through a thrift shop bag for one of the three shirts she had fished from a rack for a grand total of around sixteen bucks, plus a pair or two of basketball shorts she prayed stretched enough for Hunk to use. His current pants situation wasn’t too much better than his unsalvageable shirt. She balled up a red shirt—the one the attendant had picked out, complete with its classic Nintendo logo—and the black pair of shorts, and threw the bundle of clothing at Hunk’s chest. “Clothes. Change.”

    He seemed to get what she meant, a pleasant surprise. Pidge didn’t, however, expect for him to move to start taking his pants off, while he was still in the kitchen.

    “No!” Pidge squawked, smacking Hunk’s hands away from the hem of his pants. Jesus christ, he was going to be the death of her and her dignity. She threw her hand in the direction of the bathroom, through her bedroom doorway, on the left. “We change _in the bathroom_. **_Not_ ** in the kitchen.”

    His scolded look shifted to understand as Hunk picked up his little ball of clothes and started slowly off in the direction of the bathroom, as if he was unsure whether he was comprehending Pidge’s instructions correctly. He must have taken her lack of response as permission to continue, scampering off to the bathroom, and thankfully shutting the bathroom door behind him. He was learning already. She only wished he would grasp human societal rules a little quicker.

    She cracked some eggs for breakfast, and as she scrambled them in a skillet with a plate full of turkey bacon next to her, she pondered just what kind of place Hunk had come from. There was no way he had always lived in that alley, so she shut that thought down immediately. All she knew was he was a gentle being, had no sense of what was decently clothed, and despite his calm nature, the scars that covered his chest were gnarly. She didn’t dare to think what kind of scars were hiding on the skin his pants didn’t reveal.

    Ten minutes later and a cooling plate of eggs, and Pidge was growing worried. Hunk was still in the bathroom. She doubted it took that long to change and take care of any bathroom-related business an alley monster would need to take care of. That concerned her.

    She abandoned the plates of breakfast where they were cooling on the counter, padding back to her bedroom. Pidge knocked on the door gently, “Hunk, you in there?”

    There was some rustling, but otherwise no response. No hiss. No screech. Her concern intensified tenfold as she beat on the door again. “Hunk I hear you in there, I really don’t want to walk in while you’re doing your business but it’s been a while. Just, screech if I’m walking in on anything, ‘kay?”

Pidge pushed the door open slowly, and found Hunk on the other side, looking completely like a child who got caught with their hands in the cookie jar. The door to her over-the-sink cabinet was wide open.

    “Hunk!” She frowned, batting his hands away from the cabinet. “We _do not_ go through people’s private things in this house. You hear me mister?”

    He looked exactly how one would think a scolded alley monster would look, confused, bashful, embarrassed. He had changed, she noticed, into the clean clothes she had given him, and his dirty pants were resting gently over the edge of her shower tub with gentle care. He had changed, but that didn’t explain why he was rifling through her bathroom cabinets.

    “What were you thinking dude? I don’t know who taught you your manners, but we don’t go through people’s things, capische?”

    Maybe she had taken the scolding too far, because now he wouldn’t look at her. In fact, he looked like he was specifically avoiding making eye contact with her, the stink. She could tell by the way he kept his arm out of her view that he was hiding something.

    “Let me see it.” She commanded, craning her neck to look up at him. When he pretended not to hear her, she tugged his arm out from its hiding spot. So that’s what he was looking for. The bandages were red with dried blood, which hopefully meant that the cut had stopped bleeding, but either way they needed a changing. He was looking for bandages. He wanted to change it himself.

    Pidge shook her head with a laugh. “Bandages? _That’s_ what you were searching my cabinet for? You dork, if you had said something I would have changed them for you.”

    The look Hunk fixed her with was one of a petulant child as she led him by the hand back to the kitchen. She patted the kitchen island for him to take a seat while he rummaged through the medicine cabinet to retrieve the first aid kit again. She took the liberty of removing his old bandages and tossed them away. She glanced up at him every now and again while she cleaned his cut again. “You know, it was sweet to try and do it yourself.”

    He looked down at her and made a noise like a grunt. Pidge couldn’t contain the full-fledged laugh that escaped her, she had never heard him make a noise like that before. The same could be said for her too, she supposed, because Hunk was fixating on her like he had never heard a person laugh before.

    “The bleeding stopped, which is good.” Pidge informed him, tying the fresh bandages off, tight but loose enough not to be restricting. She smiled at him. “Hungry? I made breakfast.”

    His gaze followed her as she slid around the tile floor on her sock-covered feet to the other side of the island. Of the two plates in her hands, she offered him the one almost overflowing with eggs and bacon.

    “I don’t know what guys like you typically eat, so I figured I couldn’t go wrong with bacon and eggs. Just so you know, I don’t usually make this much food, but you’re such a big dude I thought you would be hungry.” Pidge droned on, taking her own plate of breakfast and walking around into the living room. She gestured for Hunk to follow and bring his plate with him. “Come on big guy, we eat in the living room. We’re both civil here. I don’t make Lance eat at the counter, so you don’t have to either—and _trust me_ , he’s ten times the slob you are.”

    It was odd for Pidge to share the couch with another person that wasn’t Lance, but it wasn’t entirely unlike when she had the Cuban over to eat with her. Sure, there was less couch space, but that was a given with a guy Hunk’s size. It just gave her an excuse to get more comfortable with having another living being in her apartment. Maybe Hunk wasn’t the kind of new friend Lance had in mind when he told Pidge to go out and meet new people, but Hunk was who she found, and he was there to stay it seemed for however long she could have him.

    “You up for some television?” Pidge asked Hunk. A sideways glance told her he was about face-horns deep in his eggs. Maybe he was hungrier than she thought. It hadn’t occurred to her when the last time he might have eaten was. He didn’t look like it had been too long since his last meal, but still, it wouldn’t have hurt for her to make some extra eggs at least. Just in case.

    In the comfortable silence they shared, she turned the T.V. on with a press of a button, flipping the channel from some soap-opera Lance had left the cable on last time he was over to a news channel. Pidge was never a huge fan of news, but something on the program caught her eye before she had a chance to keep surfing the channels for something more interesting to watch. She furrowed her brows, turning the volume up.

_“You heard that right Robin, our sources have confirmed with Garrison City officials the cause of yesterday’s crash at the annual landing day festival. Sources say the accident was the result of an unidentified aircraft that had run through several buildings before finally crashing in the middle of Amistad Park just minutes before the Garrison landing was scheduled to happen.”_

_“You mean, a UFO?”_

_“By technical terms, no. The only information we’ve been provided with at this time is that the crash was not the result of a Garrison-sponsored shuttle, and that the aircraft responsible did not appear to be any model supported by the Garrison’s space program. Officials have confirmed no pilot was found inside, deceased or otherwise.”_

_“Are you saying an alien aircraft crashed in Amistad park, and the Garrison hasn’t released who’s responsible_ —”

    Pidge flipped the channel numbly, not caring what program she landed on, just anything that didn’t show that same clip of the crashed shuttle from the landing festival, laying in a giant heap of black-smoking metal. Her hands were shaking when she set the remote down, and not even the celebrity-brand drama unfolding on the reality show she had unwittingly put on could distract her from the ice that flooded her veins. Next to her, Hunk didn’t so much as breathe. She licked her lips, thoughts running a mile a minute.

    Pidge turned to look at Hunk, warm amber eyes blown wide. She found Hunk in a similar state of horror, staring right back at her. **  
**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I managed to do it again, woopie. I really hope I keep this up, I've been getting such lovely comments. Apologies, again, this isn't beta read. Remember to do the thing and leave comments C:


	4. Pidge Makes A Promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge comes to grip with the fact that she, in fact, did not bring home the innocent alley monster she thought she did, but is instead harboring an alien. An alien, which by now, the entire city would be looking for. 
> 
>  
> 
> "Gravity don't mean too much to me  
> I'm who I've got to be  
> These pigs are after me, after you."
> 
> — My Chemical Romance, "Bulletproof Heart"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this is really choppy, hey for all I know it could be completely normal and just looks choppy to me cause I'm running on notenoughsleep (accurate unit of measurement). Either way, enjoy.

**Saturday, December 4, 2037 1:23 P.M. EST Garrison City, New York**

 

    Now, Pidge has made terrible decisions before, horribly garbage decisions even—decisions that landed her in _jail_. But this, _this_ , bringing an _alien_ , _home_ , _to her apartment_ , _where she_ **_lived_** , took the cake. The whole damn, seven layered, fondant and frosting, pimped to the fucking wazoo, cake.

    “Holy shit.” Pidge breathed, back pressing into her bedroom door. She held her head in her hands, pressing against her temples like it would regather the explosive shit-storm her brain had morphed into and form her typically clear thinking mind, or, at least soothe the raging headache driving her batty. She had retreated back to her bedroom, breakfast abandoned, Hunk abandoned. She needed to think, desperately, and there was no better place to think than alone in her bedroom without the alien she had unwittingly brought into her home gawking at her with those big bug eyes of his.

    She brought an alien home, one she thought was just an innocent alley monster— _cause that fucking makes sense what the_ **_fuck_ ** _was she thinking_ —and now any second her front door could be kicked in by some secret government service agents ready to haul her off to the gulag for the rest of her life and Hunk to some lab for genetic experiments or whatever shit goes down in Area 51. She fucked up, so, so terribly bad.

    It’s not like she could take it back—too late for that. Mr. Alien Pants was already in her apartment. He knew her name. She knew his. She couldn’t just casually walk back into her living room, finger gun to the door, and explain to Hunk that on second thought, he really had to be going because she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in prison for harboring an alien.

    Which brought her to her next dilemma. Aliens. Aliens were real, and she had one in her living room, probably confused and clueless why she stood up and left him all alone, to prove it. She’d known there was aliens, somewhere out there in the universe. Of course there were, it would be ignorant for her to think that out of all the planets in existence, Earth was the only planet harboring sentient life. She was a girl of facts and science, she was well aware aliens were probably real. She just never expected to bring one home by accident.

    “Fucking idiot.” Pidge groaned, squeezing her eyes shut. All she knew was his name, nothing else. She didn’t know where he came from, what he was, what his intentions were—for all she knew he could be here to annihilate the entire human race and she would forever go down in history as the woman that housed alien-fucking-Hitler.

    No, that couldn’t be right. She know, she could tell from the way Hunk interacted with her, how kind he was, the innocent look in his eyes. He wasn’t here to annihilate the human race. He was scared, alone on a planet that wasn’t his own, surrounded by people who—as far as he knew—weren’t as friendly as the human that brought him to her home. Pidge was his lifeline, and as much as she knew harboring aliens was an offense that wouldn’t look too good on her record if someone managed to find Hunk, she was the one that signed herself up for this. Hunk couldn’t leave, there was no telling what would happen when someone found him—and someone would, the whole world was probably looking for whatever crashed an _alien_ shuttle. She didn’t know he was an alien, she didn’t know she was signing up to be his protector when she brought him home, but he was, and she did, and now she had to deal with the consequences of her decision.

    What did that even mean? What was she supposed to do? Keep him fed and watered and locked away in her apartment for the rest of his life? Or hers? What if Hunk’s species, whatever he was, lived longer than humans? Who would care for him?? Would he leave??? What if his life span was dramatically short???? What if he died and she would have to find a way to hide the body and—

    Pidge made a short noise of distress, nails digging into the skin of her palms while she let her head fall back and hit against the door. The pain was appreciated, grounding her in the here and now, and in the here and now she had an alien in her apartment, an alien named Hunk. In the here and now she was his guardian. In the here and now it was her responsibility to make sure anyone that would harm him wouldn’t be able to get their grubby little hands on him. He was her responsibility, whatever that entailed.

    Pidge wasn’t alone anymore, she could feel something press lightly against the door, probably Hunk, worried about the banging noise her head made against the painted wood. Her suspicions were confirmed when a whine, like the shrieks from the alley, but softer, concerned, cut through the silence that had fallen over her apartment. He was worried about her. The quiet that followed was deafening.

    “Sorry Big Guy,” Pidge cracked the door open, shutting it softly behind her like her words. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”

    There he was, the source of her dilemma, with big, wide yellow bug eyes that were trained on her. They were so soft, so full of emotion and worry. God, she was a shitty human being. To think the idea of tossing Hunk out just to save her own ass even crossed her mind, it sickened her.

    Hunk was a smart alien, she could tell. She could tell in the way he knew exactly what she meant, what she was feeling, just by reading her body language, her tone. Precise communication was still an entirely huge issue, but he got the point she was trying to convey. She was sorry. No need to worry. Hunk’s shoulders, which had been raised like a cat’s on defense, relaxed.

    “So an alien, huh?” She asked, tugging the hulking alien along behind her back to the couch and their abandoned breakfasts. She really must have startled her new housemate, he hadn’t touched his breakfast since she retreated back to her bedroom. “You should’ve told me sooner,” She joked. “I would have gotten ironic t-shirts.”

    He was confused. Maybe communication would be a way larger hurdle than she was hoping it would be, but hey, she supposed she had plenty of time to learn Hunk’s language or vice versa since the whole world would be looking for him now.

    “I take it you’re going to be staying for a while?” Pidge prattled on.

    Hunk was trying to amuse her, act like he was listening when it was clear he had no clue what she was going on about, making eye contact—god, the eyes were going to take some getting used to—taking in her otherwise meaningless words.

    “Let’s make a pact buddy, you and me.” She said, sitting cross-legged on the couch. She motioned, “A pact among humans, the good ones at least, is unbreakable. So let’s make one, deal?”

    No-comprendo look. That’s alright, she could accept that. This was going to be a learning experience, a process, a long and lengthy process she was going to have to suck it up and deal with.

    “This is called a pinky promise. When two people make a pinky promise, they’re swearing to do whatever the promise is. No matter what, on any condition.” Pidge took Hunk’s hand and found the finger on the end, what she assumed, would be the alien translation of a pinkie. She wrapped her pink around his, slow and deliberate, looking him in the eye as she explained. “I pinky promise, as long as you’re going to stay on this shitty planet, to have your back. It’s you and me, big guy. I’m not going to let anyone drag you away to some crappy lab, cross my heart and hope for Wi-Fi to cease existing.”

    She couldn’t hold back her smile when Hunk’s eyes sparked with understanding. He got it. He knew the sentiment behind her pact, the weight of her promise. Maybe not the content, but Pidge liked to think he knew she had his back.

    “Alright then, that’s settled.” Pidge sighed, leaning back into the couch cushions and picking her plate of eggs and bacon up off the coffee table. “Time to finish breakfast and get the Kardashians the fuck off my T.V. screen.”

  
  


**Friday, December 11, 2037 9:23 P.M. EST Garrison City, New York**

 

    “Hunk, I’m back. I brought chinese food, so you know it won’t be burnt.” Pidge pushed her apartment door open, arms occupied with two parts a ridiculous amount of Chinese take-out, and one part a Half-Price Books bag. “Again, I’m really sorry about the burgers last night. I swear not all human food tastes like that, you just picked the human with the _shitiest_ cooking skills.”

    It had been a good week since Pidge unwittingly welcomed her new alien housemate into her apartment, and she was beginning to see the benefits of having a roomie to come home to. There was just something about walking into her apartment to actual sounds of life, rather than the bitter silence of living alone. It had taken some adjustment on her part, going from living by herself to living with an alien, she didn’t even acknowledge his other-worldly origins half the time, more for the sake of her sanity than anything else. But, having Hunk around was nice. Hard on her wallet, but nice.

    Only halfway over the threshold, and already she could hear sounds of life coming from the living room. Namely, the television in front of the couch. She had an idea of what Hunk was up to.

    “As the person responsible for you, I should probably be scolding you, but honestly I’m pretty proud.” Pidge remarked, setting the bags down on the kitchen island. Hunk was planted on the couch, video game controller in hand, jamming away at a retro arcade game she downloaded on her game console.

    She had taken up the challenge of overcoming the language barrier, and among the encyclopedias and baby’s-first-english-books she’d been picking up here and there, Pidge had figured what better way to teach Hunk a few words than submerging him in Earth culture? Namely, video games.

    “Hey, is that Romano Bros?” Pidge frowned, coming up behind Hunk and leaning on the back of the couch. He didn’t break eye contact with the game, one level away from beating the entire run. “I thought I said not to play this one.”

    Hunk beat the run, the screen fading to black and reappearing to display the high-score board. ‘HUNK’ occupied the top four spots, pushing ‘PIDGEON’ to the very bottom at number five. The scandalous brat, he beat her score. Four times.

    “Hunk!” She cried exasperatedly, just as Hunk started filling in his name—just like she had taught him a few days back. It was funny, she had thought he would have difficulty learning to play the games she considered herself a pro at, what with only having three fingers and a thumb on each hand, but she was mistaken. As soon as she had introduced Hunk to this old puzzle game where the objective of the game was to fit as many blocks together as you could, he had taken to it like bees on honey. Too well, apparently. “Hunk we talked about this, Romano Bros is _off limits_. That is _my_ game, and I am Romano Bros king around this apartment.”

    Hunk had been doing spectacularly well learning sight words, it was honestly amazing to her. He knew the difference between breakfast and lunch, what Pidge meant when she said she was going to leave, how to ask for something he needed to an extent. Sure, he had a bit of trouble forming the words sometimes, something Pidge blamed on the language differences between English and whatever the hell Hunk spoke, like the lack of shrieking, for one, but his comprehension was amazing. Which, made the smug grin that formed on Hunk’s lips all the more enraging.

    “Hunk you cheeky shit give me that remote right now— _don’t you dare press enter or I swear to go_ —” Hunk pressed enter, efficiently cutting off Pidge’s qualms, and unleashing an entirely different rage beast when ‘HUNK’ took over yet another spot on the scoreboard, annihilating ‘PIDGEON’ from Romano Bros existence. Oh he was _so_ dead.

    “ _Hunk_.” Pidge seethed. She may have still had her socks on from slipping her shoes off at the door, and hardwood floor may be a horrible place to run in socks, but as soon as Hunk bolted from the couch to hide in the kitchen, the hunt was on.

    “Get back here you punk!” Pidge slid on the floor, taking advantage of her sock-clad feet to make catching up to Hunk all the easier. Hunk was grinning ear to ear. One of the things he had learned early on with Pidge was the difference in human emotions. He knew when she was sad, or frustrated, or happy. All the same, he knew when she was really angry, and when she was, as Pidge put it, angry for the sake of humor. “I did _not_ teach you how to write your name just for you to betray me like this Hunk. I see you trying to hide in the closet— _do not_.”

    “Poop.” Hunk swore. Yes, he was getting a hang of English cursing too, but Pidge wasn’t monstrous enough to teach him anything truly profane until he could _at least_ form half-decent sentences. Something just didn’t feel right about him learning how to swear someone out before learning how to hold a conversation. Still, his attempt at swearing as he ran from the closet and down the hallway to hide in her bedroom was almost enough to get her to quit her pursuit. Almost

    “You’re a dead man Hunk, I worked for weeks to get that high score.” Pidge dove to cross the gap between the two of them, and missed narrowly. She landed on the floor with a thump, knocking the wind out of herself. She huffed, admitting defeat, and narrowed her eyes when Hunk didn’t even offer to help her up.

    She caught him lost in thought when she sat up, probably too deep in his own head to even have noticed her failed attempt at tackling him. His yellow eyes were locked with one of the posters she had pinned to her wall, some ten-dollar thing she had picked up grocery shopping god-knows how long ago. She’d thought it was nifty enough, pretty cool galaxy background, bold white text and a little cartoon UFO claiming Pidge knew ‘they were real.’ They, being aliens. _Oh_.

   “Hey big guy, whatcha thinking?” Pidge pulled Hunk from his thoughts softly, a hand resting gently on his forearm. He blinked down at her, trying to process what she was saying to connect it to anything he’d been learning from the language books and the English-learning-cram-sessions-a-la-Pidge.

    Hunk licked his lips, voice scratchy, still trying to work out the kinks of commanding his extraterrestrial vocal chords to bend into Earthly words. “Home.”

    One thing about Hunk’s voice in English, was it was a complete one-eighty from his shrieks and hissing. Hunk’s shrieks were high pitched, like a beetle. His English was deep, velvety. Comforting.

    His answer made Pidge’s heart sink. She could tell from the way his yellow eyes stared at the poster, probably a crappy rendition of the galaxy compared to the real thing Hunk must’ve seen with his own two eyes, that there was longing there. Wherever Hunk was from, whichever planet he called home, he was missing it.

    “I’m sorry you miss your home.” Pidge murmured. Hunk stared at her like she was the most peculiar thing in the world. Of course, they hadn’t covered the concept of apologies yet, or miss something. “Wherever it is, I’m sure you’ll get back there someday.”

    He nodded, a wonderful change of pace Pidge was beginning to appreciate worlds more than his no-comprendo look. Communication, especially when you alone are responsible for an alien, is a life-saver.

    “Hey,” Pidge began, gesturing to the kitchen and easily slipping into a different topic, “I brought back food. Hope you like Chinese, or whatever’s closest to Chinese on your planet.”

    Hunk’s brows furrowed. “Dinner?”

    “Yeah, big-guy. Dinner.” Pidge smiled, watching the longing in his eyes all but disappear in favor of the ever-curious glint in his eyes that he got when she was about to expose him to a new part of Earth culture. Yesterday was Taco Bell, tonight First Wok, and then they would jump right into the new English books she bought.

    “Those are noodles, genius. You eat those with a fork.” Pidge laughed, snatching up a spoon from Hunk’s hand before he ended up making a mess of himself _and_ the lo mein. “And those are egg-rolls, they’re veggie so you can eat those. Don’t give me that look either, I know veggie sounds weird but that’s all you’re eating until you can actually _tell me_ whether your species is vegetarian or not.”

    Pidge had learned, after a google search or two following her discovery that Hunk wasn’t just an innocent alley monster, but rather an alien, that she should be wary about what foods she feeds Hunk. For all she knew, Hunk’s culture could be vegan and she could have entirely fucked that up by feeding him bacon and eggs that first morning she awoke to a new housemate.

    Ever since Hunk wandered into her life, she had been doing a lot of learning. Like, aliens apparently like music, a lot. So much so, that Pidge had taken to leaving a radio on, if the television wasn’t already, when she left the apartment to venture out into the world beyond and bring back whatever she or Hunk needed. Or, another example, aliens have a terrible sense of hygiene, that or Hunk just hadn’t realized what toothbrushes and showers were for. Pidge was leaning towards the latter, but that still didn’t stop her from giving him the scolding of a lifetime when she tried to trim his shaggy hair and found it disgustingly greasy. On the plus side, Lance had men’s soap and shampoo he could borrow now whenever he came over, if Pidge could ever allow him to come over again.

    It had only been a week since she had more or less adopted Hunk into her apartment, and already there had been two close calls where Lance had almost unwittingly discovered Hunk. she had, thankfully, kept Lance out of her apartment thus far, mostly through a series of elaborate fibs involving her coming down with some ridiculously contagious strain of flu—which she very much _didn’t_ have—therefore, keeping Lance away from her apartment. It worked, for the time being, but Pidge knew she was going to reach a point where she couldn’t keep dodging Lance’s texts.

    Still, it was hard for her to worry about anything with an alien ball of practical sunshine roaming her apartment at all hours of the day. She was starting to learn there wasn’t much that could bring Hunk down, definitely a happy-go-lucky kind of alien guy. No amount of communication barriers could hide that. His smile was started to become a welcome constant, his laugh familiar.

    As they sat down on the couch, Hunk taking the right cushion and Pidge taking the left, she started to think maybe she’d been missing out on something all along, having a housemate around. Maybe Lance was right and she should’ve filed for a roommate a long time ago, or gone out and meet a few new people, make some friends. Or, maybe she’d done just that. Sure, maybe not in the exact sense Lance had been thinking of at the time—unless he somehow predicted Pidge would manage to find an alien and bring him home to live with her, which she highly, _highly_ doubted—but it worked for her. She was content.

  
  


**Tuesday, December 15, 2037 10:15 P.M. EST Garrison City, New York**

 

    “This is a movie.” Pidge explain briefly, hooking her laptop up to the television in the living room and skimming through her extensive collection of somewhat-legally downloaded movies. “I hadn’t shown you one before because I didn’t want you to get lost through the whole thing, but hey if a two-year-old can watch movies, damn right you can too.”

    Hunk was lounging on the couch, watching her setup the movie curiously. He had been learning well. He didn’t know everything, not even close, but Pidge didn’t expect him to. But, he had been getting better at forming sentences, and practically sent Pidge running through the apartment cheering last Saturday when he made a full sentence. Yeah, he had been gloating over his latest victory in Guitar Hero III—don’t ask her how she lost to a guy with four fingers—and had looked her in the eyes just to say, ‘Suck on that,’ but Pidge would be lying if she said she was anything but proud in that moment. Disgruntled, but proud.

    “It’s called Lilo and Stitch, you’ll like it. It’s got aliens in it.” Pidge grinned at him, and Hunk did his best to reciprocate the intensity of her expression. “Takes place in this wacky place called Hawai’i, I’ve never been, but I wanna go someday. It’s got the coolest volcanoes.”

    “Popcorn?” Hunk questioned when the microwave beeped in the kitchen and interrupted the intro to the movie.

    “Bingo.” Pidge laughed, hopping up from her spot on the couch and padding into the kitchen. She had gone all out for movie night, down to the appropriate attire—pajamas. “You’re getting _way_ better at naming your snack foods.”

    She flipped the lights off on her way back to the couch, settling in with the bowl of popcorn between her and Hunk. The movie resumed without a hitch, and Pidge couldn’t help but watch as Hunk became simply _enthralled_ with the movie. The characters, the settings, he even riled a laugh out of her when he rolled his eyes and used one of his new favorite phrases, get wrecked, when a villain appropriately got wrecked. She didn’t regret teaching him that one, not in the least.

    The more the movie progressed, the more captivated Hunk became with it, the more it showed in his amazingly expressive eyes. By the end of it, Pidge was already racking her brain for a list of things she could show Hunk next, anything to inspire that look of pure amazement again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it was CC: Don't forget to do the thing. Also, this fic has a tumblr now, saveanaliensavetheuniverse. And a playlist (on the tumblr). Bear with me, I'm ultra new to tumblr and I only have half a clue of whatever the fuck I'm doing.


	5. Lance Learns Something New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pidge considers her life now that's she adjusted to having Hunk around the apartment, and the alien in question gives her a heart attack the size of New York—and a side of explaining to do, to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BET YOU DIDN'T EXPECT ME BACK SO SOON. ESPECIALLY WITH MY TERRIBLE HABIT OF GETTING SIDETRACKED—ahem. I did the thing again. Here the thing be. I also realized my entire life as a Texan is a lie because "nother" as in "A whole nother (insert noun here)" isn't an actual word. Yeah. My Texan diction had fun with that ten minute language-style breakdown. I also double realized I made a pun with the first chapter's song. Funny thing. Didn't actually mean to connect the song "Glowing Eyes" with Hunk's glowing eyes. Shit happens. Funny shit.
> 
> "Then the road turned into desert everywhere  
> The sun ran out on a cold October  
> She disappeared, she disappeared  
> Take all your troubles, put them to bed  
> Burn down the mission, the maps in your head  
> Shot like a bullet, don't know the way  
> The ricochet, kind of got away from you"
> 
> — Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, "Canyon Moon"

**Sunday, December 20, 2037 8:04 P.M. EST Garrison City, New York**

  
  


“Excuse me, does this come in a larger size?” Pidge asked, grabbing the attention of a passing Kohls’ worker. The man straightened up, smoothing out his work vest before approaching the rack of men’s clothes Pidge had been searching through for the better part of twenty minutes.

    The man was tall, roughly Lance’s height. It was odd, tall people used to stick out to her, but she had found that after living with a six-eight—they checked, it was hard enough buying pants for a guy without him being present, she figured she could save herself some trouble getting his size down—alien, you tend to start thinking of tall on a whole other level. The man, Kevin according to his nametag, leaned down to examine the t-shirt in Pidge’s hand.

    “Yeah, what are you looking for? Two-X? Three-X?” Kevin asked, dark eyes flitting over her.

    “Three-X. Shopping for a friend, he’s a pretty broad guy.” Pidge murmured, snatching a short-sleeve flannel off the rack while she was at it. It was a variety of nice cyans, they would probably pair nice with Hunk’s dark-sage skin. She’d have to find a pair of cargo shorts for him, to really tie the outfit together.

    Pidge frowned at herself. She didn’t even give half a damn about what _she_ wore, in _public_ , but ever since Hunk showed up she’d been gaining a knack for finding clothes for him, clothes he only ever wore around her apartment, because he couldn’t leave the damn thing. He even had his own dresser drawer in her room now, just to store the clothes she’d bought him over the course of the past couple of weeks. She was starting to act like one of those grandmas that spoiled their grandkids whenever they came over, and it was startling her.

    “Your friend an alien fanatic?” Kevin chuckled, cracking a joke at her choice in t-shirt for Hunk. It was soft and black, sporting a cartoon alien flying around the galaxy in a too-small UFO. Cheesy? Yes. Was Hunk gonna love it? You bet your ass.

    “Something like that.” Pidge snorted softly, following Kevin around while the attendant lead her to another rack, assumedly to find the shirt in Hunk’s size. She snatched up a pair of tan cargo shorts they happened to pass by.

    “You know, I’ve seen you around here, poking around in the men’s section before.” Kevin prattled on, searching the rack extensively for a three-X.

    “I’ve got Kohls’ cash out the wazoo and a pathetic bank account, I can’t afford to shop anywhere else.” Pidge shrugged, adjusting her shopping bag on her shoulder. She already had a few t-shirts, mostly video game themed, stuffed away in her bag. The alien shirt just happened to catch her eye on her way to the check-out, and from there it was a whole other rabbit hole.

    “Not where I was going with that comment, but hey—I like hearing about my customers’ financial situations as much as the next guy I suppose.” Kevin continued, “What I meant was, I know what you’re up to.”

    Pidge froze, staring at the attendant scandalized. There was no way, absolutely no way that this complete and total stranger, who didn’t even know her name, knew about Hunk. It was just wasn’t possible. How could he? Three-X was a fairly common size for someone to way, there were plenty of really broad-shouldered people in the world that didn’t happen to be aliens. What if he was some crazy stalker? What if read radically deep into her response to his alien-fanatic question? What if he was a government agent totally ready to arrest her and send a strike team to bust down her apartment door and drag Hunk away to some crazy as—

    “You’re buying for a partner, but you don’t want him to know.” The attendant finished explaining, giving her a sympathetic smile. “Trust me, I understand. I have to do it all the time for my husband, he’s just too stubborn to shop for himself, or let anyone buy him things. If I didn’t work here for a living, that man would walk around in public in the same clothes he’s been wearing for weeks.”

    Pidge stared at the attendant, and all she could do was let out a gaggle of borderline-hysterical, pathetic laughs because _holy shit_ , it was all she could do not to just collapse and ride out the wave of the full-blown panic attack she narrowly, narrowly avoided. God, her hair was going to start falling out if she kept doing that. Or, at the least, she was going to have a heart attack before she hit twenty-five. Hunk was going to be the death of her.

    She could tell the guy no, explain in great detail that she was shopping for a _friend_ and nothing more, sort of, but that would take more breath than she had in her lungs to work with right now and could lead to more questions. Questions she didn’t want to answer. “Yeah—yeah, you caught me. He’s just _so_ hard to buy for y’know, some places don’t carry his size and he’s too uh...y’know, kind. Too kind to let people buy him things half the time.”

    A half-lie, really. Hunk was terribly hard to buy for, an initially Pidge was worried she was going to have to find a Big and Tall to shop at, but thank god for clothing stores that just happen to accidentally by giant alien friendly. Hunk, was also, horribly kind. It was almost gross. Pidge was sure if Hunk was aware of the human concept of capitalism, he wouldn’t accept half the things she bought for him, dead positive, in fact. She’d come home just the other day to find her apartment spotless. Completely, entirely, without a speck of dust. Hunk cleaned her _bedroom_ , her stockpile of junk, her cave of solitude, he cleaned it and made it smell like fucking roses. It was cleaner than the day she _rented_ her apartment. How he figured out what of her dismal cleaning supplies cleaned what, was beyond her.

    “Got yourself a big sweetheart on your hands huh? Those are terrible.” Kevin laughed, finally retrieving the three-X from the rack. “I have one myself at home. I wish you luck with yours. You’re going to need it.”

    Pidge bit her tongue to suppress a giggle. This guy didn’t even know the half of it. She didn’t have a partner, what she had was an alien housemate with _very_ particular needs. Namely, not leaving the apartment, among other things. Kevin checked her out at the register, bidding her off into the cold winter air with a warm smile and a wave. It was so late, she was the last person the leave the store.

    She sighed, taking in the frigid air and the way it burned her lungs. It was so nice outside, she heard on the weather reports it was supposed to snow that night, maybe. It almost never snowed in Garrison city, everyone thought it was some curse. The last time it had snowed, the Garrison was launching its latest mission to Kerberos. Pidge swallowed a lump in her throat, burying the memory deep, deep down. It had been roughly six years since it snowed. She looked forward to the day the ‘curse’ was lifted.

    She supposed she would have to cook dinner for her and Hunk tonight, given there wasn’t a single damn restaurant between her apartment and the Kohls’ two blocks down from her building. She hoped Hunk wouldn’t mind eggs again. Then again, Hunk didn’t really seem to mind much of anything. He never complained, and she knew full well that he’d learned enough English to complain to her about almost anything under the sun. They were still working on stringing his sentences together where they’d make sense, but what could she do? She wasn’t an English teacher, and unfortunately, google translate didn’t happen to have an option for freaky-deaky alien languages.

    “Well look what the cat dragged in. I’m sorry ma’am, but I don’t recognize you. Have we met before?” Lance drawled, leaning heavily against the door to her apartment building. His words dripped with sarcasm, and all Pidge could do was roll her eyes.

    “Alright, I guess I deserve that, but come on—that’s a little much.” She argued, crossing her arms over her chest and around her shopping back. Lance fixed her with a narrowed look.

    “Three weeks Pidge, it’s been three weeks since we’ve hung out. What kind of best friend leaves her bro hanging for _three weeks_?” He cried out. His white-gloved hands found their way to his hips, and she was so, _so_ tempted to take the heat off herself by mocking his uniform. It was an awful, awful uniform. Down to the golden frilly shoulder wear, but her mid-class apartment building needed to spruce itself up somehow, and what better way to do that than dressing the doorman up in a flashy monkey suit?

    “I’ve been busy Lance!” She rebuttled, throwing her hands up in the air. What was she supposed to tell him? Oh sorry, I’ve been blowing you off for the alien I’m hiding in my apartment.

    “With what? Is there some twenty-season show you downloaded off the internet that’s taken you this long to finish?” Lance raised, a frown suddenly crossing his face as he pointed at her shopping back. “Are those new clothes?”

    “Yeah.” Pidge swallowed, moving her bag further up her shoulder. She could tell by the look on Lance’s face that he knew something was up. They’d been best friends for a practical eternity, he always knew when something was up. When she was lying. When she was only tell half the truth. God, she had hoped he wouldn’t confront her so soon, not yet. There was still so much she didn’t know, so much Lance wouldn’t understand if it came out now.

    Lance stared at her for a long moment and Pidge knew, she knew there was something he wanted to say. He licked his lips, and suddenly his eyes weren’t on her anymore, fixated somewhere else entirely. He opened his mouth and Pidge waited for the punch, the accusation, of course he knew, he had to know, it was Lance, Lance knew everything. “About time you bought new clothes. Night Pidge.”

    Pidge was wracked with equal parts relief as she was guilt. On one hand, Lance didn’t suspect anything—at least, if he did, he didn’t voice it. On the other hand, Lance never hid anything from her, but here she was, keeping a Hunk-sized secret. She didn’t know what she would rather, him accusing her of harboring an alien, or the way he refused to look at her now. She wanted to say something, anything to fix that betrayed look in Lance’s eyes.

    “Goodnight Lance.” Pidge turned and locked eyes with the staircase, ready to retreat to her apartment and the alien she was putting her best friendship on the line for. She wanted to say something, but she knew there wasn’t anything she could say without giving Hunk up. It wasn’t the right time, there was still so much, so much.

    “Oh yeah Pidge, I forgot to tell you.” Lance called after her and she whipped around, almost comforted by the little half-smile on his face. “You know the Jeffersons, right?”

    Pidge frowned, “The couple across the hall that’s always smoking pot and making the whole floor smell like skunk?”

    “Yeah them—they got busted.” Lance slid back into his easy grin, and she couldn’t help but match his grin.

    “It’s about damn time, how’d they get caught?”

    “You don’t know? Pidge, the notice went out weeks ago. The manager called this drug-bust unit, you know the ones with the dogs? Yeah, she gave them a call and they came and took their dogs around all the apartments on the floor. Busted your neighbors with a shit load of weed.” He chuckled, sticking his gloved hands in his pockets.

    “What.” It came out startled, more of a choked noise on Pidge’s part than an actual question. Lance looked at her with a confused expression painted on his face. Her face must have been quite the sight, all the color drained from her skin, eyes blown wide with terror. Ice cold fear shot down her spine, through her hands, weighing down on her arms until the shopping bag slipped from her arm and fell to the floor unnoticed.

    “Pidge, what—hey, you’re getting really pale, what’s the matter?” Lance stepped over the abandoned shopping bag, gripping her forearms reassuringly, eyes full to the brim with emotion as he plead. “Pidge, you can tell me, whatever it is I’ll help you. You just gotta tell me what’s got you so spooked.”

    “They went into the apartments?” She whispered, hands trembling, legs trembling, trembling. Period.

    “Yeah, yeah with the dogs—what, did you have something in your apartment they could have found? Pidge, are you in trouble?” Lance’s brows furrowed, eyes scanning hers for something he could go by to help her.

    “I need to go.” The words fell from her lips lifelessly and all at once, Lance’s arms were empty, and Pidge was taking off up the staircase, sleeping neighbors all be damned.

    “Hunk, Hunk, _Hunk_ —” Pidge threw her apartment door open, heart banging against her ribcage. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t think, she could barely command her eyes to move as she whipped her head around the apartment and scoured every last inch. She threw the pillows from the couches, checked the cabinets she _knew_ were too small to hide Hunk but she had to check anyways, the linen closet, the bathroom, the shower, beneath her bed, the balcony, almost every single conceivable place in the entire apartment she could possibly think of. Nothing. There was nothing. Yes, there were things, but if they weren’t Hunk they were _nothing_.

    She stood in the middle of her bedroom, the bedroom Hunk had cleaned, like he’d cleaned the rest of the apartment, made it smell like roses, and she felt like she was on an island. A small, pathetic island alone in the big, wide, Pacific Ocean that just lost the raft she was going to use to sail back to the rest of the world. She wanted to punch something, and scream, and kick her own ass, because one second Hunk was there and then the next he wasn’t and that meant she failed. She could envision it now, cops come in with their dogs, find the alien the whole city was going batty over a week ago contemplating his existence, call the Garrison and then spirit Hunk away to god-knows where, where she’d never get him back. This was her fault, she was supposed to protect him, she was supposed to be the one human on this shitty planet that had his back, _she pinky promised for fuck’s sake_ , and she failed him. She failed Hunk and he paid the price.

    “Fuck, _fuck_!” Pidge swore, sticky hot tears streaming in rivulets down her patchy red cheeks. She needed to kick something, desperately, before she just up and decided to tear the entire apartment building apart brick by fucking brick. She looked around the room like a infuriated animal, a rabid beast looking for their next target to take out their raw fury on. That’s what she was, an enraged animal, furious with herself because she couldn’t take care of the one thing in life she’d been entrusted with. Who was she kidding? She couldn’t even care for herself half the time, what was she thinking fooling herself into believing she could protect something. She couldn’t protect anything, nothing’s changed. She can’t protect anything, she can’t protect herself, it’s been six years, you would think she would have learned. God, she never learns.

    She froze. She didn’t dare breath, or speak, or think, because that would make noise and it needed to be absolutely silent. Pidge heard something. It was small, quiet. For all she knew it was a figment of her imagination, her mind’s desperate attempt at giving herself hope. She stayed quiet, a listened.

    There it was again, louder this time. She almost jumped right out of her skin when a click erupted from the closet door. For a moment, nothing. Then, the door creaked open, just barely. Just enough for a charcoal and dark sage head to poke out from behind the door and look at her with wide yellow eyes. The noise sounded off again, clearly, right from Hunk’s mouth, “Pidge?”

    The world ceased to exist. The city. The building. The apartment. The room. Everything, all at once, imploded on itself until all there was, was Hunk. Safe, and sound, and hiding in her closet. She forgot to check the fucking closet.

    “Oh, fuck.” Pidge breathed, before she, quite literally, flung herself at Hunk. He scrambled, clearly not briefed on the procedures for when a small human being throws themself at him. She threw her arms around his neck, the thought that Hunk might not actually know what a hug _is_ briefly crossing her mind, before the hug was reciprocated, albeit, a tad awkwardly. That was fine, Hunk was in one piece and not in some Garrison cell for interrogation or experiments, the world could just end right there an Pidge would still be relieved. “ _Hunk_ , oh my god. _Fuck me_ , you’re alright. _Christ on a fucking cracker_.”

    Hunk must’ve been able to work out what she was saying, because he burst out in a round of golden laughter like sounds from the world’s most beautiful damn drum. Pidge could drown in the sound of it, of true and genuine laughter from the otherworldly being that had her wrapped around his finger.

    Pidge’s feet weren’t even touching the ground, suspended a good foot off the ground, entirely relying on Hunk’s awkward hold. Awkward, because apparently he wasn’t used to hugging someone nearly a good two feet shorter than him. Still, he tried his best, trying to hold her the best he could without his blunt claws causing her discomfort. It was fine, Pidge didn’t care, Hunk was fine so she was fine and all was right in the world and seriously _fuck_ her junkie neighbors.

    “You big idiot!” Pidge leaned back in the hold, just for a moment, looking Hunk dead in his yellow eyes with her own honey ones. “Do you know what I would have done if you got caught? Huh?”

    He grinned sheepishly. There wasn’t much she said these days that he didn’t understand, there was a lot he couldn’t say, but in terms of catching her drift, he was becoming a pro. And that, that sheepish grin, was the _only_ reason she went right back to hugging him rather than giving Hunk the lecture of lifetime.

    “Scare me like that again,” She buried her nose in his dark neck. He smelled like the earth and sea breeze, the old spice body wash she bought him and fabric softener. “And I’m going to kick your ass to next sunday.”

    He was smiling, she just knew. Something small, and pure, and entirely worthy and warranted for the moment they were having. Dried tears still marked Pidge’s skin, and Hunk still wasn’t sure he was holding her the right way, but Pidge was fine with it all. Hunk was safe, she kept her promise, the world could end for all she cared. She would be too busy hugging Hunk, and threatening to maim him should he ever give her another heart attack like that. Too busy to care the world ended, if it were to. Too busy to notice Lance, standing in her bedroom doorway, Pidge’s abandoned shopping back hanging limply from his hand as he gaped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeeeeh I did it again. Don't forget to do the thing. Remember this fic has a tumblr (saveanaliensavetheuniverse) and a playlist (on said tumblr) that you can listen to while you read. Note: the songs don't just match the chapter, as the story expands, you'll see where different songs relate to different components. I know. I'm terribly evil v u v

**Author's Note:**

> There it is folks! I love the Voltron fandom, so I figured it's about time I contributed something to it. I enjoy comments, kudos, suggestions, criticism, anything guys. Whatever suits your fancy. -MV


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